MHA: Omnitrix Chronicles
by HopeRope
Summary: Being told to give up on his dream has always been an everyday occurrence for Izuku 'Deku' Midoriya, but when those words come from the man he admires most, it finally sinks in. In his emotional stupor the young boy finds himself taking a wrong turn, losing one opportunity, but finding another. Now armed with an alien device stuck upon his wrist, he's no longer just an ordinary kid
1. Chapter 1

"A pro should always be ready to risk his life. Without power, can one become a hero? No, I should think not."

As those words came from the blonde man in front of him, Izuku Midoriya felt his heart clench.

Sure, he had heard it all before, 'give up' and 'get real' and 'grow up', but as long as he could look up to that great symbol, the one who stood before him, despite his usually imposing figure being reduced to such a feeble state, he turned a deaf ear towards it all.

He was his inspiration and aspirations all rolled up into one.

And yet.

And yet, All Might, the number one hero, the man he wanted to become, had just told him the exact same thing everyone else had been telling him since he was four years old.

"If you desire to help people, becoming a police officer is always an option. Those Villain Custody Officers are often mocked but… That too is admiral work!"

'No!' Izuku thought, as his eyes burned and tears pricked their corners, 'this wasn't what you were meant to say, why does no one ever know what to say?'

"It's not wrong to dream…" The symbol of justice said as he began leaving the roof, "However… You need to be realistic, kid."

'Please!' The boy screamed in his mind as he heard the receding footsteps. 'You can do it! It's all I need!' But before he could even finish that thought, All Might was gone.

It took Izuku thirty minutes to move his feet from that same spot, his eyes puffy from tears, he wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand, sniffled and began to trek home.

He shut out the world around him, and shuffled his feet through the familiar route to his house.

His mind ran a mile a minute, thoughts of all those who had looked down on him, all the looks, all the jeers, all that NOISE.

The green haired boy clenched his fist.

He knew.

He had always known.

This was the reality.

Even so he had tried so hard, he had tried hard because he had known;  
But maybe it was time to give up.

He didn't have to be a hero to save people, he was smart and good at analysis, he could be an administrator for a hero company, or, like All Might had said, a police officer.

But he didn't want to.

That wasn't his dream, that wasn't what he had worked so hard for.

Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do, he was just weak, quirkless Deku.  
The boy released a long sigh.

He was exhausted, not only because of today's events, but because of the slowly culminating stress of giving what he considered his all despite no one believing in him collapsing down on him after the fragile supports he had set up crumbling.

There was nothing more in the world he wanted now than to get home and just collapse on his bed.

The boy suddenly realised how problematic his wish would be, as he found himself standing in the deserted version of the park he used to frequent with his 'friends' when he was younger.

"Friends huh?" The boy gave an ironic chuckle, his memory flitting back to what Katsuki Bakugou, arguably his oldest friend, had said to him earlier.

"Jumping off a roof? I wonder if that really would solve my problem?" He muttered bitterly, "it's weird my legs would bring me here of all places though." The boy could vividly remember all the abuse and bullying he had been put through at this very place, considering all of that, this place was like a monument of others voicing their displeasure with his dream.

The boy made his way to a rickety swing set, one he was extremely familiar with, as it had always been his favourite toy, and yet only now did he noticed the large patches of rust and imperfections that dressed the frame, small imperfections in his small beacon of hope that he had never seen before, or maybe he just refused to notice it.

The boy sat down on the somewhat too small seat and swung himself back and forth, staring languidly at the quickly darkening sky.

He'd always enjoyed swings.

The air rushing past him.

That feeling of freedom.

Almost like he could fly.

It emulated the closest experience he would ever have to a quirk.  
The closest he'd be to his dream.

The boy left his musing for enough time to briefly notice the streak of fiery light cascading down the blackened backdrop, a small, mirthful smile came to his face as he evaluated it.

"A shooting star? Would it be childish of me to wish for the chance to be a hero?" Izuku asked himself, as he watched the celestial body rocket across the sky. "A dumb dream begets a dumb wish after all..."

The boys eyes widened after continuous observation, as he came to realise that the once tiny spec became larger and larger, quickly bathing the small park and surrounding woods in a warm orange glow. A rather pretty experience, if Izuku hadn't been swinging in the potential crash site.

The boy leapt off the swing, causing himself to land painfully on his hands and knees, before he half crawled half leapt to what he considered a safe distance, scrambling behind a tree for safe measure.

The shooting star entered a visible range, revealing a round metal object that was set alight. It careened towards the park faster than Izuku could follow, landing a few hundred feet away with a startlingly loud bang, it continued forward afterwards, leaving a large furrow across the ground as its momentum carried it forward, it only stopped a few steps away from the boy, after bulldozing the swing set the young boy had just been sat at.

It took a few seconds for sheer curiosity to give Izuku the courage that he needed to gingerly edge his way towards the scene and peer over at the football sized, metal sphere.

Izuku eyed the ball suspiciously.

He decided that messing with it, whatever it was, was not a good idea, a pro hero would likely be on the scene shortly, and he had frankly had enough of the whole hero scene for a good long while.

As he went to turn on his heel and leave, the ground beneath him crumbled, causing the boy to slide down the edge of the crater on his behind, before he finally stopped about three feet away from the ball.

The overlapped plates opened up at that moment, revealing what Izuku assumed was a watch. It was primarily black and grey in colour with a dial in the middle that looked like a watch face which sported an hourglass shape that glowed a vivid green.

The light drew Izuku towards it, it seemed oddly peaceful and reassuring.

Before he knew it he reached out his left hand, trying to pick up the item, but as his hand hovered just above the foreign object, the watch jumped up on its own, the clasp at the back opening up and wrapping itself around his wrist.  
Izuku yelled in shock, as he fell back down, shaking the afflicted arm violently in a vain attempt to remove the device, this only lead to him realising that it wouldn't come off so easily.

He tried his best to pry it off desperately for a few seconds, but his fingers couldn't even get in between the watch and his skin.

The boy finally breathed in exasperation, realising the futility of his actions, he took an analytical look at his newest accessory and current situation.

It was late, much later than he usually got home, which was especially bad on a day where a villain had been reported so close to his school. His mother was definitely worried about him, which would lead to her crying up a storm.  
It was in his best interest to get home sooner rather than later.

Izuku slightly poked the watch, it didn't seem all that dangerous, hadn't absorbed his blood until he was dry or even taken over his mind yet, so surely he could just leave it alone for now and deal with it later in his room.

No sooner had the boy come to his conclusion did his wandering finger find one of the small buttons on the device, this caused the dial on the watch to pop up with a rather unique noise, the hourglass shape changing to a diamond.

Different silhouettes were rapidly displayed on the diamond before one of a four armed, well built figure displayed itself.

Izuku looked down with curiosity, the green glow of the watch reflecting in his eyes, calling to him once more. He placed a cursory hand on the extended dial, held his breathed and pushed down.

The glow intensified, bathing the area, and causing the young boy to feel a strange sensation course across his entire body, his frame bulked up considerably, and two extra appendages sprouted below his armpits.

In a flash the once small, wimpy boy, got replaced by a four-armed red humanoid with four yellow eyes, red spikes on his four muscled arms, three fingers and a thumb on each hand, two toes on each foot, and a black stripe splitting his face down the middle.

Izuku stood up in surprise, quickly realising he was much taller than before, and that his body was brimming with power. He felt it hard to balance at first, mainly due to the change in stature, but he adjusted after a few seconds and managed to take a few tentative steps.

The boy clenched his large red fist, he looked at it for a second, equally confident in his sudden gain in power and morbidly curious of the capabilities of his new form.

"I've got this!" He muttered, bending his legs and bracing himself.  
In one swift motion he sprung forth, shooting through the tree line, and rapidly reaching a height where he could see the roofs of houses and apartment buildings stretch out before him.

Izuku unintentionally whooped in excitement.

Even still, his analytical mind was hard at work, he could tell that his lower arms were fluttering uselessly in the wind, likely due to the fact that he had never had to worry about controlling the extra appendages before. There was also the fact he didn't seem to be breathing properly, whether this was due to this form needing more oxygen or that he was simply not used to breathing enough air for such a huge stature he wasn't sure, but these were two problems the boy knew he would have to fix if he ever wanted to feel comfortable in this skin.

After soaring for around one hundred meters, the now bulky form of the boy soared through the tree line once again, crushing branches and trunks before landing with a boom, causing a web of cracks across the ground.

The boy looked over to his left shoulder, the flashing red glow coming from the shoulder plate with a component reminiscent of the watch's dial catching his attention.

After three flashes, and being surrounded by a red light, Izuku found himself shrinking back down into his human form.

He looked curiously at his new accessory, noting how the previous green was now replaced with red.

"So there's some form of limit to how long I can maintain the transformation, and by assumption some form of cool down. The actual time I was capable of keeping the transformation was a few seconds at best, whilst the cool down has gone on for much longer than that. There must be a way of increasing the time I can stay in that form and the gap between transformation…" He muttered to himself in a rapid fire way.

Although he couldn't contain his old habit of over analysing, inside him there was a newly reborn spark, a spark that told him he could do it.

One he was very familiar with, yet at the same time felt alien to him, as if before it had been full of the impurities of doubt but now burnt with a pure, confident light.

This was the spark that helped relight the fire of heroics inside the boy, and marked the beginning of the story about the man who would usher forth a new era of peace.

The man who would prove that hero's weren't born, they were made.  
This is the story of how he, despite being quirkless, became the strongest hero.


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Izuku did when he got home that night was get scolded by his teary eyed mother.

He had expected as much considering it was past midnight when he finally found his way back, thankfully it didn't escalate more than a stern telling off and a week of being banned from hero watching.

Which, honestly, the boy wasn't sure was even a punishment anymore, a week felt too short even, considering the green haired boy had a lot of thinking to do in regards to heroes.

Next, however, he collapsed on his bed, he was completely exhausted from the day, he didn't even have enough energy to change out of his uniform, despite the unsightly state it was in.

Thankfully, the weekend was rolling up, so it wouldn't matter much if his blazer smelt of slime and sweat.  
When he woke up in the morning feeling refreshed and ready, he changed into more comfortable clothes, switched on his computer and began researching and writing notes around his newly found device.

"If I assume that the watch works on a similar basis to temporary transformation quirks like that Mount Lady I saw debut yesterday, rather than something permanent, like Gang Orca's, I can see if there information on anything specific they had done in order to prolong their transformation time…" the boy muttered to himself.

After surfing around forums and reading some of the more publicly available medical documents on quirks of the aforementioned nature, the boy managed to deduce that it all came down to something as simple as how strong their bodies were.

Transformation quirks worked by changing someone's genetics, for example, Izuku had read a report on someone with a quirk called Lycanthropy, which allowed them to transform into a werewolf of sorts, this was done by changing certain genes in a way that made them emulate those of a wolf, whilst keeping others the same to allow the remaining parts to stay human.

Using this report he managed to gather that not only did being faster or stronger in their normal human form make them even faster when they activated their quirk, but their endurance played a big part in allowing them to maintain their transformed state, this was because maintaining a transformation was and extremely taxing ordeal as not only did the body's cells have to hold that new form, which already required a lot of energy, but they also had to store what they usually looked like, which was probably done in the nucleus of the cell, to allow the user to return to normal without side effects.

From what the boy could tell, maintaining a transformation longer than the body was capable could lead to cellular deterioration and incomplete reversion, a kind of limbo between the full transformed state and human state that required extensive surgery to heal.

Luckily for him, the watch seemed to have some in built fail safes to prevent both those things, namely the time limit.

These reports were also extremely helpful in the field of extra appendages too, as they gave great tips and exercises to help learn to control new body parts that may appear as a side effect of a quirk.

Happy with the conclusion that he would have to start working on his body so he could stay transformed longer and spend time in his actual transformations to learn how to control them, Izuku decided that he would have to plan a routine later, after he checked to see what the other forms the watch gave him were.

He kept rigorously researching quirks and physical training methods until his mother called him for breakfast.  
"Morning Mom, sorry again about yesterday." The boy said sheepishly, whilst sitting down at the table.

"It's alright honey," his mother said, tending to the rice cooker, "I just wish you would tell me where you're going before running around, I can't imagine something like what happened to Mitsuki's son happening to you."

"Kacchan? What happened to Kacchan?" Izuku asked curiously, conflicted on whether he should worry for his friend or cheer the downfall of his bully.

"You didn't know? He was held hostage by a villain yesterday on his way home from school, poor thing was being strung about like a puppet, and even though it only took fifteen minutes for the heroes to save him, but he had to be sped to the hospital in critical condition."

Izuku froze. He had never imagined something like this happening, especially not with All Might of all people in the area.

"W-which villain was it?" He asked.

"They didn't have a name for him, but he was made from some kind of slime or sludge if that rings any bells."

'Slime? Like the one who attacked me? But All Might caught that villain. Unless…' Izuku felt sick to his stomach, it was his fault, because he had grabbed All Might to ask him that stupid question, he was the reason his childhood friend had almost died.

No.  
He couldn't blame himself.

So what if the villain had freed himself? At least a couple dozen heroes operated in the area, not to mention All Might had been nearby, so how come all these professionals had been unable to save one person before he ended up in the condition he was in?

The problem must have lied with the heroes, he'd noticed it of course, since he spent most of his time studying them and their abilities.

Sometimes Image and prestige were all that mattered to a hero, the top percentile of the career were better for it, having impressive track records when it came to saving people.

Even then, Mustafu was a hotbed of pro hero activity, quite a few were in the double digits, some were even quickly coming up on the single digits, so why had it taken fifteen minutes for someone to get their ass in gear and save Kacchan?

He couldn't help but feel it was a case of fearing negative exposure, he had no doubt a few heroes were just terribly matched with the situation, but he could name five heroes off the top of his head that would have been near the area that could have solved the situation his mother described to him.

The manner was messy, sure, and the hero would likely have gotten some mild damage, but that's just what you sign up for when you take the job really.

Then there was All Might.

Where was he?

He had literally been in charge of taking the villain into custody not five minutes ago, he understood the man probably solved three separate crimes in that time span, but he couldn't be so bogged down that he had failed to follow up on his own arrest.

Unless of course, he was, and that was another issue all together.

Still, It all stemmed from the current members of the hero society slacking off.

Izuku had to change that, if people thought all it took to become a hero was a flashy quirk, and that constant hard work and dedication to the job rather than yourself were not principles all heroes lived by, then the bar needed to be raised urgently.

The boy clenched his fists and looked at the watch.

'I can't let the title of hero, the thing I've been chasing my whole life stay in such a state, if everyone else is content with ignoring how low standards have been gotten recently, then they won't mind if I raise them.'

A plan began formulating in the boys mind, people felt safe simply because of All Might's existence, that was the power of a symbol of peace, so could the boy bring about change by being something else?

A symbol of progress maybe?

Someone so strong that others had to up their game to keep up or fall behind?

"Um, Izuku, what's that on your arm?" The boy in question looked up at his mother in surprise, being broken out of his thoughts had always been disorientating, as she was placing a bowl of rice on the table.

"Uh, I-It's a watch, but it doesn't really tell the time, so it's not actually a watch. It's not dangerous though so there isn't a need to worry or anything…" the boy muttered, quickly trying to piece together some kind of plausible lie that went beyond, I found it in the park.  
"You're muttering again sweetie."

"Ah, s-sorry, it's a project I've been… helping someone work on." Izuku began, "he's a um… Q-Quirk scientist, who saw my notebooks by chance one day and um… I-In exchange for my help analysing quirks and helping him progress with his research, he gave me a prototype." The boy lied, and he could tell he'd done so terribly, but he was banking on the fact that he seldom lied to his mother to give home some extra point into convincing department.

"Izuku honey, please don't tell me you accepted a weird device from a stranger." His mother stated worriedly. "That's very dangerous you know."

"He's not a s-stranger mom, I've been helping him for almost a year." The boy was digging a hole and he knew it, but objectively speaking, convincing his mother the device came from someone with professional knowledge was much better than telling her he had almost got crushed by a shooting star and then took something potentially dangerous from said star and was planning to use it to kickstart his hero career.

"Hun, I would really prefer if you took that off until we take it to someone for appraisals, just because you talked to someone for a long time doesn't mean they have nothing but good intentions." His mother said sternly.

Izuku could tell where this was going already, his mother would demand to keep it in a safe place for a while, and then take it to someone for them to check out what it did, once they found out the abilities of the watch, Izuku was sure he'd never get it back.

There was no escaping it, the only thing worse than upsetting his mother to the point of tears was activating her mama bear mode, and Izuku had done both in the span of two days.

He would not be bested today, however, for he had a trump card.

"A-about that, it kind of, sort of, doesn't umm… come off…" the boy said with a trailing voice.

"What?" The sternness in her voice made Izuku flinch, well that had backfired horribly.

"It doesn't come off, it's a very important project okay. So my friend had to make sure no one could take it from me." Izuku defended, his voice raising a little, he loathed to yell at his mother, but at the rate things were going, he wouldn't be able to use the watch, and he was under no illusion that he could chase his dream without it.

"Izuku, you must understand how suspicious it is the leave a teenager with something potentially dangerous that he can't take off, we need to get you to a doctor or someone who can get it removed." His mother said, her volume raising to match his own, annoyance plastered on her face.

Izuku was never disobedient outside being a little over zealous when it comes to heroes, and arguing with her when it was clear she was in the right was not helping his case.

"We have to get it off you." His mother commanded almost angrily, she couldn't understand why her son was fighting her on this, it was obviously not something that could be trusted, and for some reason the anger reflecting onto Izuku.

"I don't want to take it off." Izuku semi-yelled, "The watch is safe, and I can use it to be a hero!" The boy exclaimed, tears threatening to brim from his eyes. "I won't let you stop me Mom, I know you've never believed in me, and always hated my dream because of how dangerous it is, but if you don't want to support me either, then I'll do this without you too!" The boy yelled, burning tears pouring from his eyes.

His mother looked taken aback by his actions, it was never something she had expected her meek little Izuku to do, and the words he had said, they finally sinked in.

The woman's eyes widened in realization, tears coming to her own eyes. She realised finally that she too was at fault here, she'd never supported her son, not when he was diagnosed as quirkless, not when he had spent days trying to figure out how to be a hero without one, and not even now that he had finally found the solution he had always been searching for.

The reason was simple, she didn't want her son to be a hero, she hated the notion, it was dangerous, horribly so, and the thought of her baby boy putting himself in danger everyday tore at her very soul.

As a mother she couldn't outright go against her sons dream so blatantly, in truth she was even been happy when he'd been diagnosed as quirkless, as horrible as it was, but she'd seen the videos Izuku loved so much, she rather her son spent his life an outcast than actively risking his life.

Which she realised was horrible of her, but she just wanted to be a little selfish, she had never thought that what she had been doing was unforgivable.

However, now that she looked at the burning determination in her son's eyes, even through the tears on his face, she realised her mistake.

Being bullied for being quirkless wasn't even an issue to her son, no, what haunted her baby boy wasn't that he was born with no powers in the world of heroes, no, it was the fact that he poured his heart and soul into something no one believed he could achieve.

Not even his old mother.

As that realisation set in, Inko Midoriya understood one fact, she had failed as a mother.

Various emotions passed through her face, before she settled on tears sadness and tackled her son in a bear hug.

Oh my god, Izuku, I'm so sorry." The woman cried, holding onto her son as if her life depended on it. "All these years, I've been horrible to you, haven't I?"

"W-what? Mom no, you're the best mother I could ask for." Izuku protested as he returned her hug.

"Even though I've never given you the support you've needed?" Inko asked.

"You've always supported me in your own way mom, you might not consider it much, but you've always supported my crazy hero watching habits even though I know how worried you get." Izuku comforted.

His mother looked at him with hope for forgiveness in her eyes.

She'd relent today, about the watch, she wasn't convinced it was safe, but Izuku seemed sure he needed it for his dream, and she had just decided to support his dream as much as humanly possible.

"Okay, you can keep the watch," Inko said finally, "but I don't want you putting yourself in danger or doing anything remotely dangerous until you're under supervision at U.A, understand?"

Izuku simply nodded.

The two eventually sat down for a now cold breakfast.

"So what does it do." Inko asked finally.

"Well umm… I think it basically replaces the need for a quirk genome by temporarily alerting your genetic composition. It's actually pretty cool, I'd love to show you some time mom." Izuku said.

"I'm like that honey, is there anything you need for it? Anything I can help with?" Inko probed, wanting to help in anyway possible.

"Well actually, turns out I'm not in good enough shape to use it just yet," Izuku said in embarrassment, "So I'm planning to start a workout regime, could you possibly help me with the dietary needs?"

"There's nothing I would like more." Inko smiled.

After a cold but lively breakfast, where Izuku had been happy to admit he felt closer to his mother than he had since his pre diagnosis days, the returned to researching in his room.

He spent a whole day planning out a work out schedule based on tips by professionals, and during late evening he got a whiff of a place called Dagoba beach. He had a vague recollection of it as somewhere that used to be beautiful, but was now covered in rubbish both due to the ocean's current and people littering, it offered a good, out of the way place to train his skills and work out his body.

The boy decided to throw on a tracksuit and check it out.

It was about as much as he expected, miscellaneous pieces of trash of all shapes, sizes and utility, it smelled like a sewer and was completely devoid of any people.

Perfect.

Izuku carefully made his way down to the beach, careful not to displace anything in case it caused the mountain of things around him to become an avalanche.

He looked at the trash surrounding him before his hand found the watch.

He transformed himself into the only form he had been in before, and aimed a powerful punch from his now red arm at the ground that blasted away everything around him.

Izuku returned to normal a few short seconds after, and his eyes filled with wonder as he saw the beautiful scene of the sun resting gently on the break between the ocean and the sky, painting it's usual cerulean in an orange colour similar to the one it had been last night.

He smiled, as the sound of waves gently hitting the shore was the melody which marked the beginning of his journey.

His start line.


	3. Chapter 3

The UA entrance exam, the most popular in the country, but also the one with the lowest passing rate.  
It had always been Izuku's dream to take part, but it wasn't since that fateful day ten months ago, that he ever really stood any semblance of a chance to pass.

The boy idly grabbed the watch that had been attached to his wrist ever since it had come into his possession, the item that gave him confidence in his success.

Looking at it reminded him of the ten months of hell he put himself through in order to better harness its capabilities.  
Day and night he would train himself at the beach, using what everyone else perceived as trash to train his body, all eleven of them.  
After all was said and done, he'd managed to extend his transformation time to a maximum of ten minutes, as long as he didn't push himself, and reduced the cool down to roughly fifty percent of how long he stayed transformed.

All his effort had now amounted to him standing confidently before the towering structure of UA, a small smile of awe plastered on his face and his clenched fists shaking in anticipation, ignoring the weirded out expressions and looks he was receiving from those hurrying past him to get to the exam.

'This is it! I'll show them now, everyone who has ever doubted me.' The image of an imposing two meter tall blonde flashed through the boy's mind. 'I'll show him that he was wrong!'

He took his first step, the first step towards greatness.

He tripped.

'CURSE YOU LEGS!' He screamed internally as he careened towards the ground, 'it's fine though, just a small hiccup, as long as I don't smash my teeth in I'll be fine.'

He braced himself for impact, taking a few seconds to realise he had stopped just above the ground.  
"Are you okay?" Came a light, sweet voice.

"Hmm?" Izuku mused, turning his floating body towards his saviour. He blinked at her appearance, she was rather short, with fair skin, big round, brown eyes, and a round face. Her hair was similarly brown, reaching her shoulders, two locks framed her face, with a short bob at the back. 'Holy shit, she's so cute!'

Which was good and bad, good because well a cute girl had approached him, bad because now he would need to try extra hard no to let his social anxiety make a fool go him.

He was getting better at the whole confidence thing, he'd spent the last ten months confronting most of his old bullies, and there were a lot of them.

A lot.

The girl helped Izuku back to his feet, "Sorry for using my quirk on you without permission, but I feel like it's a bad omen to trip and fall, especially today."

Izuku chuckled at this.

"Y-yeah, thanks, I'm Izuku Midoriya." He laughed awkwardly, hopefully his face wasn't going too red. "You've got a cool quirk, um… does it reduce density or is it gravity based?"

"I'm Ochako Uraraka, nice to meet'cha, and yeah it's called zero gravity, I can remove gravity from anything I touch with all five pads on my fingers." She smiled showing the boy her hands for a few moments, there was a slight pause, Izuku didn't really know how to respond, this had been the longest conversation he'd had with someone that wasn't his mother in the last ten months.

Lucky for him, Ochako seemed more versed in the art of social interaction, she released a long, nervous breath, before chuckling "This is pretty nerve wracking, huh?"

"I s-suppose, but taking an exam usually is." Izuku said, giving his best laid back smile, placing his hands behind his head like he'd seen done by 'cool' people in media, and closing his eyes to calm his heart, speaking to a girl was more difficult than he thought, the two then started their way to the entrance, "with what I've seen of your um… quirk though, I'm sure you'll be fine."

"Eh, how can you know that? Do you know what the exam is?" She quizzed.

"No, but this a hero school, so it reasons it'll be something common to hero work like rescue or combat, your quirk is pretty versatile in those cases." The boy replied, averting his eyes from her interrogating gaze.

"Reasons? Versatile? You sound so fancy Midoriya-kun." The girl giggled, relaxing visibly, "so, what's your quirk?"

"Me? You sure you're ready to hear something so amazing?" Izuku asked seriously, causing the girl to nod, clench her fist in anticipation and stare unblinkingly, ready for a big reveal. "What I can do." He paused, "is a secret!"

Izuku would safely shout from the rooftops that being a lovable ass was the only social role he could well.

"Eh?" Ochako paused, "Wait a minute, that's not what you're meant to say!"

The boy gave a large grin, proud at the reaction, feeling a surge of confidence, he opened one eye to look at his companion, regretting his decision as her cuteness basically attacked him, he shrugged with his palms facing the sky to hopefully distract his face from the blush it was trying to build again.

"Maybe, tell you what, if we both pass I'll tell you."

"Alright, I'm pumped now!" The girl exclaimed, before she paused for a second, "Thanks by the way, you really helped to calm me down."  
"Think nothing of it, I f-feel like we'd get along really well if we both got in, so I um… Couldn't stop myself from helping you." Izuku smiled, hoping it wasn't too crooked.

The two had reached the entrance to the amphitheater where they would get briefed before the exam, there they were directed to sit in school order, which meant the two recently acquainted teenagers had to separate.

"Well, good luck to us both, see ya!" Ochako smiled, before running on ahead.  
Izuku released a breath before a triumphant smile crossed his face.

'I-I did it! I talked to a girl!'

Izuku looked up at the cityscape in which he was to take the exam, it was huge, and it impressed him how UA could even afford to build one of these let alone the multiple they seemed to own.

Based on the rules, time limit, and his own abilities, the young boy began formulating the best plan to pass.

'If I take into account the nature of the exam, then it's safe to assume they want to not only test combat ability, but also the ability to track villains, and mobility, therefore, the Faux-Villains would be spread out initially, that would give a chance for candidates with tracking and movement type quirks to rack up some points, that means the heavy hitters shouldn't be getting many points in the first few minutes, as the density of points will take some time to build up.' The boy didn't realise he was muttering all this under his breath, gaining the attention from the candidates around him. 'If I were to use Wildmutt or XLR8 straight off the bat I could gain a lot of points in the early stage of the exams, but that would leave me at a disadvantage for the last five minutes of the exam, which is likely when they will release the obstacle they mentioned, I don't believe that something considered run on sight is really worth zero points, so I can't miss out on it. If I take the first couple minutes to get to the town centre, and transform after that, I'll be able to stay transformed for the rest of the exam regardless of inconsistency of transformation time during physical exertion, but I need to use a form that I'm familiar enough with to get a passing grade with less time than everyone else, I only have one form I'm that experienced with so…'

"You, the one who is muttering!"

Izuku looked up at the tall boy with blue tinted hair and glasses that had just addressed him. He knew that tone well, and it triggered an automatic reaction he always had to people who tried to intimidate him "Yes, you, the one who is shouting!?" The boy replied.

Being an ass worked wonders.

The tall boy looked taken aback at the response, but quickly regained his composure.

"I suggest you stop muttering, you are unnerving the other participants, is that what you're here to do? Sabotage our chances?" He questioned.  
"Me?" Izuku asked, "Imagine that? I'm not nearly smart enough to sabotage anyone, but if you guys need an excuse for why you failed today, to feel better about yourselves or whatever, then sure, you can say I sabotaged you." This got him a host of dirty looks from the other participants, especially the one standing directly before him, "Oh, that's a heated look, sorry, but I don't swing that way."

The tall boy looked like he wanted to retort, but at that moment Present Mic declared the start of the exam.

"There are no countdowns in the real world, go!" The blonde yelled.

The tall boy turned back to Izuku for the last word, only to realise that his fellow participant was already running ahead of the rest of the group.  
'No hesitation? It seems I underestimated him.' He thought, but his praise was misplaced.

'Gotta thank Present Mic later for the save, this confident thing is way harder than I thought, I'm glad I got given the chance to escape.'

He had been practicing his acting skills in the last few months as well, a hero need to act like everything was in control even when it wasn't so he knew it was an important skill.

He still had that pesky social anxiety, but acting tough for a few seconds wasn't a problem, unless the audience were female, then hormones were added to the mix, and that ruined any chances he had of not muttering or stuttering.

The boy continued making his way towards the centre of town, even as he could hear the other participants using their quirks to gain points.  
It would have been too much to ask to be avoided by the robots until his self imposed time limit was up, so it was pretty easy to predict that a one-pointer would roll up in front of him.

Izuku froze.

'Shit, I thought I got over this!' He yelled mentally, even after all his training, after he promised himself he would be more confident.  
Izuku shakily reached for the watch.

'If I transform I can easily deal with this, it would only take a few seconds, and then the watch would recharge just as quick' but he stopped himself, he knew he couldn't, something like that would exhaust his cells and reduce the time he could stay transformed, and then he'd lose precious minutes to gain points right when doing so would be easiest.

This would greatly increase his chance of failure, and all that work he had put in, all the gruelling hours, would be wasted.  
Then he wouldn't be able to prove that man wrong.

"NO!" The boy screamed, his body moving on instinct, he dodged the incoming attack, before grabbing onto the arm of the robot, he swung himself under the arm and up, landing on the robots shoulders, before he grabbed the robot's head and ripped it from its socket.  
Izuku snapped out of his stupor.

'Those moves, it was just like Wildmutt…' before he could look into it further he heard present Mic announce that two minutes had passed.  
That left Izuku with a sour taste, just a few more seconds and he wouldn't have needed to doubt himself, but neither would he have learnt a lesson in acting without the power the watch gave him. It was a paradoxical situation he found himself embroiled in more often these days.  
Snapping himself out of his deep thinking, he rolled his shoulders, and pressed a button on the watch, the cover extended out, and Izuku turned it a few times until he found the silhouette he wanted.

He took a deep breath.

"It's hero time."

Then he slammed his hand down.


	4. Chapter 4

Izuku's first move was to jump.

He crouched down and, using all the force Four Arms could muster, which was quite a considerable amount, he leapt up above the skyline of the cityscape.

From this high up, he could see almost the entire area, allowing him to easily discern where the most robots were. This allowed the boy tp position himself in the air, guiding his flight in the direction of what he assumed to be a couple of three pointers.

He rocketed down, crushing one of the robots underfoot.

"Target detected."

Izuku casually threw a punch, caving in the head of the second robot.

"That's six points…" he remarked, before turning to look at the source of the whirring of machines behind him.

Izuku crossed his arms to block the barrage of missiles sent his way, grunting with pain as he felt some of the concussive force even through his enhanced durability.

'A stupid mistake' he remarked mentally, he knew that if this were not an exam for teenagers, those missiles would have done a lot more, possibly even fatal damage.

Despite his pause to self assess himself, the boy began rapidly back pedalling to avoid the more mobile one pointer that was coming towards him with the likely goal of continuing with its fellow machine's attack.

He managed to barely step out of the way, allowing him to grab the robot's outstretched arm, and pivot on his heel, spinning the surprisingly light, probably heavy for anyone not of his current strength and frame, machine in a full circle before throwing the robot at it's ally.  
This distracted the three pointer for a brief moment and completely disabled the more lightly armoured one pointer, allowing Izuku to lunge forward, navigate his fist through the tangle of robotic limbs and smash down with all his might, hitting the hulking robots head and successfully disabling it as well.

The boy extracted himself from the remains of his conflict, and performed a quick calculation, ten points all ready in the bag, Izuku began looking for more robots.

He needed to speed up his earnings, however, from his previous experience as an All Might fanboy, although he supposed that no matter what the symbol of peace had done to him he held some form of begrudging respect for the man, he was still the best after all, Izuku knew the symbol of peace had gotten an even 100 points in this exam.

He had decided ten months ago that the first step on his long road to proving to All Might how wrong he was on that fateful day by beating the man at every opportunity on his way up, was of course entering the school he had graduated with a score higher than even he could have gotten.  
The somewhat morbid humour behind the fact that he had greatly changed his opinion on what he considered to be the qualities of a hero, the object of his obsession had stayed the same.

But as he had already said, All might was still the best, he was unfortunately the physical embodiment of heroism, despite what that part of Izuku's brain that was extremely bitter over being cast aside without another look for the umpteenth time tried to tell him.

At least the greenette no longer worshipped the very ground the blonde man walked upon, a change which had not sat well with his ever worrying mother, especially when he had put away a lot of his All Might items instead of proudly displaying them like he used to.

Izuku thought the change was beneficial at least, not being obsessed with following in the footsteps of one man had allowed him to see some flaws in his own reasons for being a hero.

He now wanted to forge his own path, a path that involved proving a certain number one hero very wrong.

It was irrational, a small part of him told him, but that part was eclipsed by wanting to prove those who had never believed in him wrong.

And that all began with destroying these robots.

Ochako Uraraka was doing fine, she had, at least what she believed to be, a good amount of points, and she hadn't even reached her limit with zero gravity yet.

If she were to take a guess though, just fine wasn't going to be enough, this was UA, and there were definitely people with amazing quirks that could tear through this test like nothing.

She had to give it her best though, for her parents, and on a smaller note for Izuku, the boy who even gave her the courage to step into that amphitheater as anything other than a ball of nerves, despite being a nervous wreck himself, she could tell he had tried to hide it and be confident, mostly because he was hiding it terribly.

"Release." The girl said, placing her finger tips together, causing the group of robots she had been levitating to fall to the ground with a crash, the impact damaging them enough to count as a victory.

Ochako quickly added up on her fingers, "Yosh, 28 points. If I hurry I can get a dozen more at least." She was feeling a little more confident than before, mostly because Izuku had been corrected in saying her quirk was rather suited for this particular situation.

A single touch and a robot was pretty much done, and it helped that they were such large targets, her strategy so far had been quickly darting between robots that had set their sights on other participants and touch them with her finger pads.

She made extra sure not to steal the quarry from any other participant, she would feel bad if she had caused others to fail because she just swooped in at the last moment and stole the points they had fought so hard for.

She was ready to begin another round of hit and run, confident that she could get at least a dozen more points in the remaining time she had left, which would really help reassure her that she would probably get a spot in the next year's heroic class.

Unbeknownst to the poor girl, however, she wouldn't be getting any more villain points, because the faculty had just released an obstacle to test the true nature of the people who were taking the exam.

A robot that towered over the already admittedly tall skyscrapers of the training ground rose up out of seemingly nowhere, destroying buildings and asphalt, causing debris to fly everywhere.

All the participants of the exam stopped and stared for a few seconds, some wondering where and how U.A had hidden such a monstrosity of a being, or how the could afford not one, but at least eight, before their survival instincts kicked in, telling them to worry about that later and to turn heel and run away now.

Not everyone was quick enough, however, as the giant robot's first order of business was to bring to bare a humongous fist without any set target, it only managed to achieve the task of spreading the various components of a high rise around the cityscape, sending dust spraying wherever a chunk of concrete and rebar landed.

Ochako had failed to get enough distance unfortunately, and felt something heavy hit the back of her leg, causing her to trip to the floor and cry out in pain from the pain of her leg being almost crushed and her various joints becoming scraped raw from contact with the rough asphalt.  
She looked back in fear as she saw her leg locked under a large piece of concrete with seemingly no easy escape, and the gigantic figure of the zero pointer closing in.

She tried desperately to reach for the debris that held her in place, in hopes of all five pads touching the chunk, allowing her to activate her quirk and at least free herself, she doubted she could run far on whatever state her leg was in, but being free would at least let her hide rather than swait like a sitting duck for the colossus to reach her.

However, try as she might, her fingertips just barely brushed her target, her thumb only a few centimetres from allowing her to activate her quirk.  
She groaned in effort, struggling to stretch just enough to get herself free, but her entire body froze in petrification when a looming, hand-shaped shadow was cast over her.

She whipped her head forward to look at the other contestants, wanting to yell out and beg for help from her fellow participants, but her voice got caught and she choked on the dust from the recent impact.

She couldn't see anyone who was planning to stand up to the huge robot anyway, and so doubted begging for help would get any results.  
Tears began brimming in her eyes.

'Please, someone, help me…' she screamed internally, closing her eyes in resignation, she wasn't scared of death, it was just an exam after all, it made no sense for the students to be in mortal danger, but the pain was still a very novel concept to the girl, and being squeezed by a huge robot hand seemed like it would hurt more than the broken leg and scrapes she already had.

As the last vestiges of hope faded away with the light that was quickly chased by the ever growing shadow of the zero-pointer, she heard a deep, unfamiliar voice.

"You know, someone I know once told me it's a bad omen to fall over." Came the booming voice.

Ochako cracked open her eyes, not sure if she would like what she saw, but looking up at the large red figure dressed in a green tracksuit was a better outcome than she had hoped.

Eventually the words it had spoken to her registered in her head "M-midoriya?" The girl managed weakly.

The red figure gave a smile, as he held up the hand of the zero pointer above his head, almost like he could do the task with three hands tied behind his back.

"The one and only, now let's give you a hand or two." Izuku smirked.

The girl sighed in relief as the two other arms Izuku now possessed removed the rubble that held her down from her leg, finally relieving her from the crushing effect on her leg, and picked her up in a princess carry.

The large four armed figure that was Izuku Midoriya then tucked his knees, releasing his hold on the robot, before side rolling away, leaving the range of the giant palm as it hit the ground, as soon as his two feet touched the ground, he bound away, clearing tens of meters in a second.  
"Phew, that was a close one…" Izuku sighed, looking back to the robot that had retrieved it's arm and was making its way forward, creating horrendously loud crashing sounds and sending more debris flying everywhere with each step.

Izuku clicked his tongue, looking at the other wounded participants scattered around the street, he was so close to triple digits, but he couldn't turn a blind eye to people in need.

Unfortunately, despite Four Arm's amazing physical powers, he was not fast enough to save them all, and his time limit for his transformation was quickly approaching.

A darker part of him that like to pop up occasionally also told him he would be sacrificing his chances at surpassing triple digits, and thus falling short on his goal before he really took a step towards it.

He'd already saved the person in the most danger anyway, and the exam was likely to end before the super slow zero pointer got anyone else, it wasn't like his intervention would really improve the situation.

"Hey Midoriya-kun, your quirk is amazing." Ochako said weakly. "You'll be a great hero."

Izuku froze.

'Damn it!' he yelled internally, he'd almost fallen into an abyss he never wanted to even look at, debating whether sacrificing his own advantages to provide even the smallest amount of help was something a lot of modern heroes did, and usually the debate swayed towards their own comfort in that case, it was the very thing he swore to never become, to never do, but he'd been blinded by his own desire for recognition.

This situation was enough to allow that small part that told him his goal of one upping All Might was stupid to finally speak up louder than anything else.

Izuku chuckled to mask his slowly rising self loathing, "Thank you Ochako."

The girl looked at him curiously.

"Wait here, I'll be right back." He said, resting the girl down gently in a sitting position against a wall. "Unfortunately, it seems I've gotten all the points I can today."

The boy crouched down for a second, aiming his flight before he shot up towards the head, the confirmed weak spot of the robots, which he'd been sure to confirm many, many times just that day, he reached his peak above the robot and allowed the force of gravity to take him down towards the eight, glowing red eyes of the zero pointer. He brought up all four of his powerful arms and held his fists together in a four armed hammer fist.

"Ultimate move: Meteorite Hammer."

The four arms moved in perfectly practiced tandem and smashed down against the green plating of the zero pointer, which created a shockwave the travelled across various buildings, shattering glass and caving in the robot's face plate so deeply it's head became almost paper thin.  
The robot slowly fell backwards, it's colossal figure groaning as it moved in a way it was not built to allow, before crashing onto the floor with a crash so loud that various participants covered their ears.

Izuku was just glad the participants that had behind the robot when it appeared had vacated a large radius around the zero-pointer's position, so no one further got hurt from his actions.

The boy landed with a thud on the chest of the zero pointer, releasing a deep breathe as his shoulder armour flashed red, and he transformed back to his normal form.

He stood triumphantly amongst the dust and the smoke.

The boy released a tired sighed as he heard Present Mic finally announced the end of the exams, glad that it was over, but slightly disappointed that he had not reached the previously coveted one hundred.

"I guess eighty nine points will just have to do."

**AN: I have decided to go back and flesh out some scenes in previous chapters, these changes will no affect the story at all, however, so nothing has to be reread for anyone to continue reading, the changes will only improve descriptions, and improve character interactions to seem more in character.**

**If you feel a scene is lacking in any existing chapters, and any to come, feel free to include it in a review or PM me and I will go back and see if I can make any improvements.**

**Thanks for reading.**


	5. Chapter 5

The week after the exam had all blurred together for Izuku, between his old regime of training and school, and his new found hobby of talking to his newly made friend Ochaco over text, her number had been acquired with much courage and only the littlest bit of muttering his head off, the greenette seldom had any time to notice that the clock hands were moving.

Especially since he'd discovered his new hobby of figuring out what hidden side effects his watch had on him.

Now he spent most of his waking moments hooked up to what Izuku had dubbed a muscle memory scanner a contraption he had built through a liberal use of what he considered his easiest to use form and his hardest.

It was impressive what one could do with super intelligence and a quantum computer that was literally a part of you.

The aforementioned Aliens had been dubbed Grey Matter, a small grey humanoid, about six inches tall, with a serious case of bug eye and an extremely heightened sense of intelligence, and Upgrade, who was quite literally technological goop that had been an absolute headache for Izuku to learn how to use, since it wasn't exactly easy controlling something with no Bones.

Or muscle.

Or anything really.

But thankfully after a few months he's been able to master movement and the use of upgrades abilities, which had worked spectacularly in tandem with grey matter's ability to build technology that was on a hitherto unheard level.

Long story short, Izuku was now rich, and he had a state of the art machine to diagnose his body with.

Well, his mother was rich, since Izuku was not old enough to hold claim of any of his venues for now.

Anyway, what he'd discovered was that the watch had a certain bleed through effect when it came to muscle memory, which made sense since his memories were shared between forms, what that meant was that he could technically move like one form whilst being a different form, which was actually quite useless, since each form had very different physiologies.

However, there was one thing it did let him do, he could create a fighting style for when he was in his human form, something that hadn't occurred to him as useful until that meeting with the one pointer during the entrance exam.

By mixing and matching months of practice and instincts he got as certain forms, he was trying to derive the most efficient fighting style he could, which was why he was hooked up to a cubicle shaped machine running on all fours on an omnidirectional treadmill and thinking about the upcoming results.

Any nervousness he had for the exam results were non existent, he had checked online for any previous year's cut off points, and it was safe to say his score was just a little more than passable.

He didn't have it in his heart, however, to tell Ochako her 29 points were probably not enough, so he pretended he had no semblance of a clue as to how well she did.

Izuku filed all these thoughts away, however, as his VR helmet sent him a notification that his bubbly best, and only, friend had sent him a message.

{OMG! I did it! I passed}

Izuku contemplated the message with both happiness and a certain amount of confusion.

He was glad his friend had passed, but at the same time he was surprised she had done it with so little points.

Either this gave him a reason to further concrete his conclusion that the current hero system was failing to provide enough incentive for improvement, or that this meant the exam had some form of hidden criteria that greatly affected how points were distributed.

He quickly congratulated Ochako, and tried to probe her for information on the matter, only to receive a rather cheeky reply that basically amounted to telling him: 'it's a secret.'

The boy abstained from pursuing the matter any further, deciding that he'd find out eventually, he still wasn't really worried about failure since there was no way someone could get 60 points based on hidden criteria alone, unless the faculty were being very biased.

Izuku decided that he had enough of being hooked up for one day, and removed the hydraulic arms from his arms and legs, before proceeding to station himself in the living room so he could get his letter as soon as it arrived.

Izuku's home wasn't small by any means, he was well aware that a lot of families got by on much less, but it had never quite caught up to modern times, his family wasn't particularly well off, so a lot of fancy technology that had recently entered the market had been forgone.

He had heavily renovated the place to placate his teenage urge to own the newest and shiniest thing using money he had acquired and the aforementioned combo of Grey Matter and Upgrade to deck his house out in cool technology.

The boy sat down on his new comfy smart couch, it was definitely overkill and that wasn't considering how comfy the cushions were, but it made him happy, so he built one.

His new position put him in hearing range of the mailbox, allowing him to settle with a notebook and the internet until he heard the sound he had been waiting for.

The package was actually rather unassuming for what it contained, but Izuku still opened it as if he was dealing with government secrets, just because he was confident in his results did not mean he was losing his shit over the fact that he got a letter from U.A.

After opening his package and activating the small holographic projector, the boy couldn't help but raise a quizzical eyebrow when All Might of all people appeared on screen.

"I AM ON SCREEN!" He yelled triumphantly.

Izuku noticed that he was using his hero form, which irked him just a little, honestly wasting time from the precious three hours he had a day to record videos was a definite irresponsible use of his power.

"Now, let's see, Young Midoriya, you scored exceptionally on the written portion of the exam, and as for the portion practical you got an astounding 89 points, which already puts you at the top of the scoreboard for all applicants, very impressive." All Might explained, causing Izuku to smirk despite his recently less zealous worship of the man in question, All Might was still the number one hero, and it never hurt to be praised by someone of that skill level. "However, that is not all, what kind of hero school would only measure a student's capability for destruction."

All Might clicked a button on a remote he was holding, turning on a screen behind him. The screen began showing a replay of Izuku saving Ochako from the zero pointer.

"For a hero, the ability to save is equally if not more important than the ability to capture evil, and thus the school also awards rescue points," the man said in a manner much more contained than Izuku thought he could muster. "BUT THAT IS NOT ALL!"

All Might pressed another button on the remote that changed the image on the screen again, this time it was an image of Ochako speaking to Present Mic.

"U-Um, you know Izuku Midoriya? Kind of tall, scruffy green haired boy?" The girl uttered nervously, "well he saved me in that exam, and he used up his chance to get points. I dunno if that means he might fail, but I can't bare to be the reason if he does, so, um, I'd like to give him a few of my points if that's okay."

Izuku watched the stupidly selfless act of his friend, a somewhat alien brewing of emotions stirring in his chest, he felt grateful, and proud to call her his friend, but he also had an urge to slap the girl upside the head for trying to sacrifice herself so needlessly.

He assumed that this was what friendship and camaraderie felt like.

Strange.

He couldn't say he didn't like it though.

"This ability to inspire others to do good, this is a skill possessed only by a rare few, the greatest heroes, for such selflessly saving another despite disadvantaging yourself, we awarded both you and young Ochako forty rescue points, and for inspiring others to follow in the path of true heroism, we awarded you an extra twenty rescue points. Giving you the maximum sixtyrescue points we award during this exam" All might paused to take a deep breathe, causing Izuku to resist the urge to cover his ears. "WITH A TRULY HEROIC SCORE OF ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE POINTS, WE WELCOME YOU, IZUKU MIDORIYA, TO YOUR HERO ACADEMIA!"

With that the transmission cut off.

Izuku smirked to himself.

"Imagine that, All Might calling me heroic." The boy said to himself with relative mirth, he promised himself he wouldn't be too bitter towards the man, but he enjoyed irony as much as the next guy.

It didn't help that All Might had probably also gotten the maximum sixty in his exam which meant the symbol of peace had likely gotten 160 points rather than the divulged 100, so Izuku had in fact failed his self imposed goal of beating the pro.

Silver lining, he looked veritably bad ass when he took down that zero pointer though.

The boy sent a text to Ochako and his Mother, who was currently at work at her new job designing for 'the' fashion company she had always wanted to work at.

A job she got in one part due to her excellent abilities, and another due to Izuku pulling a few strings using his new wealth and influence. Which basically meant that he could pretty much take control of the company whenever he felt like it, but he wasn't going to tell his own mother that he was her boss…

With the whole congratulatory spiel out of the way and a promise to celebrate later, Izuku continued planning for the future, a few final touches to his hero costume here, a few planned hostile takeovers of certain businesses there, and a training regiment to help his new friend prepare for the new school year.

"UA, I finally made it, the next step to becoming the hero I've always wanted to be has finally started." Izuku mused, "it's time to show the world that I'm not just some ordinary kid!"


	6. Chapter 6

Casting his eyes towards the towering entrance of U.A. for the second time in his life, the second of many he noted with a smile, Izuku took a deep breath to cool his nerves.

Despite all the changes he'd managed to make in his character the last few months, some things were harder to change than others.

In this case, the hero fanboy inside of him wanted to squeal in a pitch that would likely shatter the windows of the building he was looking at with such reverence.

His new, more realistic view of heroics had not affected his love for all things crime fighty after all, and this was still the best hero school in all of Japan, that still meant something to him despite his less than starry outlook on the hero system itself.

The crux of the matter was, anyone who came through the halls of this school, his new school, left a powerful and highly skilled hero, what they choose to do with that power and skill was their own choice after all.

"Are we gonna go in Izuku? Or should I stare at the entrance for a little longer?" Ochako asked in a mirthful voice.

The green haired boy turned to his best, and only friend for that matter, shooting her a smirk for her cheek.

"Well, I could look at the entrance all day, but I suppose being on time is important, so I guess I can move on…" he replied with mock begrudging in his tone.

This signalled the two teens to begin walking forward into the school building.

Izuku thought it was rather lucky that he and Ochako took the same train line to school, and were in the same class, it not only allowed them to spend the next few years sharing experiences that would tighten their bonds, but it also meant that he didn't have to walk into his new class all on his own.

Deep down he was still nervous in social situations, but having the bubbly personality of his new partner in crime by his side helped alleviate a lot of this anxiety, which would hopefully save him from ruining every one of his first impression with the other people in his class.

It also helped that he now had hours of experience talking to cute girls, not that he got any better at it, he was just less mortally terrified and confused by the species in general.

Despite all this, he couldn't shake this odd feeling he had that the universe was about to hit him in the face with a can of worms that he would inevitably have to deal with, so he supposed having someone who would hopefully always be on his side wasn't the worst thing in the world.

After successfully navigating the maze that was UA's corridors, which was not an easy task, and finally finding the entrance to their new class, the two heroes in training couldn't help but marvel at the size of the doors.

"Those are pretty big huh?" Ochako said rather matter-of-factly, Izuku fought down the urge to make a snarky remark about the obviousness of her statement, he had learnt early on that Ochako always meant well, especially with her occasional lighthearted but empty comments, he reckoned half the time they were just made to break an awkward silence or help lighten the mood, both of which the boy was grateful for because he absolutely sucked at any form of small talk, besides, Izuku needed to save his snark for the inevitable arguments he would have with his other classmates, hormonal teenagers that they were.

There was also the fact he was trying to cut back on being an ass, now that he had a suspicion that his other forms were starting to affect him more than just physically.

"They're probably for people with body altering quirks." The boy offered his friends as he pushed the unsurprisingly heavy door aside, offering one final prayer to the universe in the hopes that it didn't do him dirty.

His prayer went unanswered as he was instantly caught in the middle of a shouting match between a boy that struck him as somewhat familiar, and his oldest acquaintance.

Honestly, he didn't know exactly what to make of Katsuki Bakugou anymore, ever since he had gotten the watch, it was like the blonde had completely forgotten who he was, he hadn't attempted to bully him even once, nor had he offered any support to the bullies that rose up in his place, not that Izuku was complaining, the last ten months were nice and quiet for a change, he'd discovered that not everyone was quite as brutally efficient as the blonde when it came to decimating someone's self esteem, plus the green haired boy had the watch now, and it gave him abilities that were much better than anything his classmates could produce.

God did that make him sound like his ex tormentor.

Izuku had started getting a little concerned when he had sat next to the boy for the entrance exam briefing and the blonde hadn't even spared a glance his way.

Again, he wasn't exactly complaining, it struck him as odd was all.

No sooner had he finished opening the large door to the classroom, did the attention of the two quarrelling teens snap towards him.

The tall, blue haired boy considered him with what Izuku could only describe with surprised admiration for a second, before dashing up to him in what the greenette assumed was a poor imitation of robotic movement.

"YOU!" the boy yelled, causing Izuku to step back in surprise, "you are the boy from the start of the entrance exam, I must apologise for my brashness during that time." he began before giving a perfect ninety degree bow, "you managed to discern the true meaning of the exam, something which I, myself, could not achieve!"

Izuku blinked at him owlishly, was the boy talking about rescue points?

Truthfully, the green haired boy had no clue that they were a part of the exam, but what he did know was who the boy before him was now, and he certainly wasn't going to let a chance to mess with this guy again slip by unexploited.

"Ahhh, so you too figured it out?" Izuku began with grandiosity, "Truly a student worthy of U.A, tell me friend, what is thy name?" it was hard to fight the grin of his face when the boy vehemently reached for his outstretched hand with both of his own and began shaking vigorously.

'I'll cut back on being an ass tomorrow.' the green haired boy swore in his mind.

Ochako had no such qualms with hiding her amusement as she covered her mouth to stifle her giggle and began shaking her head at her friend's antics.

"My name is Iida Tenya, it is a pleasure to meet you." the boy said politely, before pausing, offering Izuku a chance to give his name.

Before he could, however, a sudden voice came from behind him in a low tone, causing him to jump in surprise.

"If you're here to socialise then get out."

Izuku turned to regard the speaker only to be met with what he could best describe as a yellow caterpillar with an unkempt face.

Izuku held in his yell of surprise, releasing a sort of choked gasp.

The others did not.

Izuku's ears hated him at that instant.

"You took 8 seconds to sit down, which is completely irrational." the caterpillar said, as he took his place at the front of the class, "I am Shota Aizawa, your homeroom teacher." it said, before the crisp sound of a zip was heard and a man with long, scruffy, black hair, a simple set of black clothes and white bandages wrapped around his neck emerged. "Go get changed into these and meet me outside." he stated simply, removing a P.E kit from his yellow chrysalis. "You have ten minutes."

He then left the class with no further instructions, leaving a class of twenty confused teenagers to sort themselves out.

It was a trial and a half for Izuku to complete his teacher's request.

Not only did he not know where he was meant to get the necessary P.E kit in his size, he also had to find the changing rooms, he assumed the school had them, he was just struggling to figure out where, but finding out required him to navigate the sprawling labyrinth that were the halls of his new school, and he only had ten minutes to do so.

He was questioning his teacher's ability to. Well. teach. He had thrown the lot of them in the deep end within about five seconds and didn't even stay to watch them drown.

Maybe it was a test of independence or something, to show them they would no longer be spoon fed everything they needed by the faculty, or maybe he was just over thinking it and his teacher was just horribly lazy.

Izuku was really hard pressed to tell.

Because of how big of a rush he and everyone else had been in he was unable to even start a conversation with any new people, in fact everyone was in such a rush to get outside that they didn't much help each other to achieve their collective goal, but Izuku didn't make an effort either really, so he wouldn't hold it against anyone.

He'd made a new friend, or he thought so at least, since Iida had tagged along with him and Ochako on their U.A maze adventure, he wasn't sure why since he'd literally done nothing but be an ass to the guy, but he somehow had the impression that the glasses wearing boy was even more socially dense than himself.

Once all was said and done, by some miracle the whole class made it outside before the time was up, and now they were regarding their new teacher curiously.

"What we are going to do today is the basic physical apprehension exam, however, the government puts a ban on quirk use during said exam, which is completely illogical." the tall, scruffy man said, pulling out a ball with a mechanical portion that Izuku was unsure as to what it did. "Izuku Midoriya, you scored the highest in the entrance exam correct?" the man asked, throwing the ball towards him.

Izuku noticed the attention on him instantly, looks of admiration and rivalry focused on him with the intensity of a high baring laser was also Katsuki's slightly angry glare in the mix, but that was probably the least odd thing the blonde had done in the last ten months, Izuku was more concerned by the fact that it wasn't as angry as he thought it should be, and that there was no shouting.

"Y-yes sir." Izuku replied, catching the ball, thanking his recently developed reflexes for saving him from embarrassment, not that he wasn't embarrassed by the attention, but he was somewhat able to mask that.

"What was your ball throw score in middle school?" the man questioned.

"Umm… W-well, something like forty meters…" Izuku said, chuckling nervously, it wasn't exactly the best score, and he knew it, although it was probably better now from all of his exercising.

"Throw the ball without leaving the circle, you have three attempts, use whatever means necessary to get the highest score."

Izuku walked up to the circle dauntlessly.

The boy looked down at the display of his watch for a second, wondering if he could gain a better score with his other forms other than Four Arms, he felt like he was overusing the form a little, but most of the challenges he'd met at U.A so far could easily be dealt with through the use of sheer brute force.

Nothing said brute force like a hulking four armed figure.

He deliberated for a few more seconds, thinking up a few elaborate schemes that he could do, before simply decided that running with the same old thing wasn't necessarily bad.

In a flash of green light, Izuku was now stood there in all his red glory, many of the class exclaimed in excitement, it was the first time they were seeing him in this form, and Four Arms had quite the impressive presence.

Izuku got into position to pitch the ball as far as he could, his muscles straining against the uniform that had grown to match his new size, the watch liked to be nifty like that, although he wasn't sure what U.A were thinking making the uniform so tight at the sleeves.

The boy threw the ball using his best imitation of a professional pitch, causing a shock wave to spread out from the sheer force of the movement.

"2115.9m" Aizawa stated, seemingly unperturbed by his long black hair billowing in the winds Izuku had just generated, in fact the man stood perfectly still, as if unaffected by the force at all, which was quite impressive to the teen.

Aizawa showed the monitor he was holding in his hand to the class so they could verify it for themselves, and they all began clamouring in an excited tone.

"Awesome! That looks so fun!" A girl with pink skin, matching hair, and an interesting set of eyes exclaimed excitedly.

"It looks like fun you say?" Aizawa asked demurely, "So you were planning to spend your three years here having a good ol' time? What happened to becoming heroes?" He continued, the tone of his voice raising the tension in the air considerably. "All right then. In that case new rule: the student who ranks last in total points will be judged hopeless."

He gave the class a stern once over, as if to make sure everyone was paying proper attention.

"And instantly expelled."


	7. Chapter 7

The once jovial atmosphere had suddenly been replaced by anxiety and fear.

Izuku, pressed the Omnitrix on his shoulder to forcibly return himself to normal, no sense in wasting the time he could stay transformed after all, especially if this event now had stakes.

He wasn't overly worried about coming last, but he wasn't about to risk that fact without even knowing the quirks he would be up against, especially if he ran out of steam before the end.

"The kid who ranks last… Gets expelled!?" Ochako yelled in surprise,

Izuku wasn't sure what she was worried about in particular, he could already see various ways she could excel at most of the trials they usually did for a physical apprehension test, plus he'd given her a few pointers on work outs that would have helped her greatly, whether she did them or not Izuku hadn't asked, they'd barely seen each other in person since the exam, and she had just moved into her new apartment recently, so he hadn't had the chance to see if she'd had made any improvements.

"This is our first day here! That's just too unreasonable!" She continued.

Perhaps she was worried about the others? A hero did need a selfless heart, so if so, he was sure his friend was on the right path to becoming an extraordinary hero, however, he was sure that people who had passed the entrance exam were more than in shape for this test, plus he doubted Aizawa was actually telling the truth about the consequences, since they were a bit too harsh, even for the best hero school in the country.

Then again, he'd never heard of a Shota Aizawa in the hero circuit, granted it wasn't uncommon for heroes to never divulge their real names in public, but they were technically civil servants, so a quick online search of a hero's name was more than enough to find out their identity, the fact that Izuku hadn't heard of his name, and neither could he place his appearance to a Hero Name, suggested his teacher was an underground hero, and that lot operated under a different modus operandi.

Away from the prying eyes of the media, underground heroes could be a lot harsher with their treatment of villains, and a lot more brutal in their tactics. They didn't have to be kind to civilians either, since they received no publicity to speak of, therefore they had no reason to deal with fans, nor care about slandering from the media.

Izuku had actually taken a rather big shine to underground heroes recently, putting in all that work to help people and receiving zero PR was quite admirable in the boy's eyes, and he wouldn't have minded taking the same path as them, if one day becoming the number one hero was no longer important to him.

Unfortunately, It was very, very important to him, proving that he could achieve something so big as someone who was quirkless, would not only serve to prove everyone who had ever doubted him wrong, something he wished for dearly even though it was a goal that was oxymoronic to his recently found reasons for being a hero, but it would also help inspire other quirkless people to hopefully believe in themselves again.

I was a needed sacrifice of some of his ideals.

For now, however, he had no clue as to the nature or personality of his new teacher, so for all knew the threat of expulsion could be very much real.

In fact, if he thought about it, there was the case of the last two sports festivals having much less hero students than any other year, which, as far as Izuku was concerned, might be substantial evidence on the veracity of the man's threat.

Aizawa looked at the brunette languidly, hiding his face in his scarf and hair, only one lazy eye peeking out.

"Natural disasters, massive accidents, villains, all kinds of calamities can happen when we least expect them. The whole of Japan is drenched in 'unreasonable'. It's our job as heroes to restore reason." The man looked at them once more with his stern gaze, a lazy smile gracing his lips "The next three years will be nothing but hardship. That is the meaning of Plus Ultra. Now then, it's time to step up to the plate."

The first trial was a simple fifty meter dash, the first two students who participated were Iida and a girl named Tsuyu Asui who obviously had a frog based quirk from how she was standing in preparation for her run, although Izuku wondered how much like a frog she actually was, since she looked quite human.

The results came out pretty much as Izuku expected really, Iida had literal engines in his legs so his short time of 3.04 seconds was rather impressive, he could beat it easy with the right alien, and Ingenium, the pro hero who the green haired boy suspected was his classmate's, and probably new friend's, Izuku really couldn't tell with this one, brother was a lot faster, but then the boy supposed the man his classmate's older brother was a pro hero with years more training and experience, plus from what he heard of Ingenium's quirk, Iida could get a lot faster if he had more distance to cover, whilst there was a lot of room for growth, Izuku was now curious as to whether Iida could outrun his fastest form one day.

Tsuyu got a score of 5.58 seconds which was still rather impressive, her using her naturally stronger legs to jump rather than run was a rather ingenious move on her part, but unfortunately she still paled in comparison to the speedster of the class in his natural element.

Next came Ochako's turn, and she reduced the weight of her shoes and clothes to try to shave some seconds off her time, she managed to get an even 7 seconds, which was somewhat of an improvement, but based on the exercises Izuku had given her, which he had taken great care into optimising as well as he could based on what he knew about her bodily composition, which sounded creepier than Izuku meant it.

Clothes couldn't be weighing her down all that much, so most of the time she had shaved off had definitely been from her own physical improvement, which she was being somewhat lax with, but the greenette could now rectify that since she lived much closer than before.

Her partner had been a boy with a tail called Ojiro, who finished the race faster than Ochako by pushing himself forward on his fifth limb, he displayed rather graceful movements, which Izuku could attribute to a trained martial artists from all the research he had done to perfect his own fighting style.

The green haired boy filed that information away for later, maybe he could ask his class mate for advice on his own skills.

Next was the pink skinned girl and a blonde boy that seemed to sparkle for some reason, Izuku somehow that it was not actually quirk related, and the boy was maybe carrying glitter on his person.

The girl, Mina Ashido, skated along the track using a white secretion from her feet, Izuku was confused as to what substance could remove friction, maybe some form of lubricant, but he was unsure if anything could allow someone to skate on dirt, a question for later he supposed.

The blonde boy literally shot a laser from the belt he wore around his navel to propel himself forward, before crashing to the floor, implying some kind of time limit. Izuku wondered if the laser was purely concussive, and how it could exhibit force against its user without seemingly pushing against anything, perhaps it was pure kinetic force released in both directions, a side effect of the quirk maybe?

Eventually it rolled up to the greenette's turn, and by some twist of fate, Katsuki had been paired up with him.

Izuku looked over to his childhood acquaintance, who seemed to be doing his best to ignore him.

Emboldened by the recent lack of bullying and the fact that he was surrounded by classmates and their teacher, Izuku said something that he never thought he would to his ex bully.

"You ready to lose Kacchan." The boy asked, even going as far as to try to rile the blonde up with his childhood nickname.

Katsuki looked up at him, the fire of anger burning in his red eyes.

"Shut up Deku." He growled quietly, which was not the reaction Izuku expected, nor wanted, but at least the boy had acknowledged him.

"Not feeling the banter?" Izuku asked, when all he received was a sidelong glance and a snort of annoyance, he decided that he needed to get to the bottom of Katsuki's odd behavior eventually, but for now, he decided to focus on his tests and beating his prior oppressor. "Suit yourself."

The boy turned away from his ex-friend and rolled his shoulders, before searching for the form he needed.

In a flash of green light he transformed into a humanoid figure that heavily resembled an armoured velocipede, the Omnitrix symbol was on his chest and he was almost completely black and white apart from the fact that he had five blue stripes on his long black tail.

A blue face with green eyes, black lips, and stripes above and on the right side of his eyes looked over to his partner who looked at him with determination, crossing his arms in front of his face palms facing backwards.

"Don't blink." Izuku taunted before a visor dropped down from his conoid helmet.

As soon as the go was given, Katsuki blasted forward, explosions rocketing from his pams, the kickback and kinetic energy produced lifting him off the ground and pushing him forward with more speed than he could have generated by running, this allowed him to propel himself to the finish line in a little over four seconds.

Katski took some time to congratulate himself on proving his previous theory, this new development should theoretically lead to sustained flight, which was an ability that he had always wanted to add to his arsenal.

He came to a skidding stop at the end of the track, kicking up some dirt, before he looked back towards the length that he had just crossed, fully expecting Izuku to be lagging behind him like the green haired boy usually did, but his expectations had been betrayed as he was greeted by a completely empty track, not even the dust Izuku should have kicked up had graced him with its presence.

He looked over to a sudden burst of red light, which quickly died down to reveal the green haired boy back in his normal form, before his eyes moved over to the robot that had recorded and was now displaying the boy's time.

He clenched his fist in rage as he noticed it was not only faster than him, but it even managed to reach below a second.

Tiny explosions crackled in Katsuki's hands as he realised the gap that had suddenly found itself between himself and Izuku.

He wanted to scream in anger, demand that the green haired boy explain how he'd gotten this strong, where his sudden ability to transform into not one but two monstrous forms came from.

He had to hold himself back, however, screaming and yelling were no longer things he could do safely, since the slime villain incident, he'd taken serious, irreparable damage to his throat, and raising his voice too much could cause serious problems.

He also knew it wasn't something he should do, lording his strength over everyone else, claiming to be the strongest, when some second rate villain had left him powerless and almost killed him.

He'd learned his lesson about thinking he was the greatest at everything.

So he simply glowered at Izuku, stewing in his anger for now, besides, Izuku only had strength and speed, but it seemed to be exclusively one or the other, sure he was stronger and faster than him, but Katsuki could still do plenty of things Izuku couldn't, like fly.

There was no way that nerdy Deku could fly, no matter how well he could analyse a quirk, super strength, or super speed could never translate to full on flying.

Placated by his small victory for now, he wordlessly stepped away from the track to let the next students participate.

He was by no means happy, but he could interrogate his classmate later, when he wasn't being crowded by the other teens in his class for his results, and when the watchful eye of his new teacher wasn't looking at him, prepared for any outburst he may have

'Pebbles.' Katsuki thought to himself, 'They're all pebbles in my path, some of them are just bigger pebbles than others.'


	8. Chapter 8

The tests continued, and every student managed to excel at one area or another.

Even a small, purple haired kid managed to get a rather impressive score on the sustained sideways jumps, the way he used his quirk was rather impressive, so Izuku was quite hopeful of his intelligence, he would have tried to befriend the boy, if the looks he gave some of the female students didn't make his skin crawl.

Not to get him wrong, the boy could appreciate a pretty girl as much as the next guy, and he had to admit that all of the girl in his class were actually rather good looking, even the invisible girl had a figure going for her, which really did not help his anxiety situation, but the way the diminutive boy seemed to leer at them gave Izuku the impression that he was imagining them doing unspeakable things, even by his hormone addled standards, and that was one abyss Izuku didn't want to look into.

The way the boy looked at Ochako especially sparked some negative emotions in the green haired boy, which was another alien sensation that he wasn't sure what it meant.

In terms of constant exceptional achievement in the trials, Izuku was definitely first, followed closely by a girl with a physics defying ponytail called Momo, who ket pulling bullshit out of her bare skin. A sight that was arguably enjoyable, but made the green haired boy blush to his ears every time.

There wasn't really an issue with any of the trials, but Izuku was finding himself hard pressed to come in first place for anything other than the fifty metre dash, which frankly surprised the boy, not that he was counting out any of his classmates from the beginning, but it just surprised him that despite the versatility of basically having what amounted to ten quirks, he couldn't win them all.

He supposed that this was simply the curse of a jack of all trades.

Even with four arms brutish strength, he just barely fell behind a boy with multiple limbs, Mezo Shoji he believed, who grew three hands on one of his arms during the grip strength test, unfortunately for Izuku, Four Arms' hands were too big to fit more than one and it was against the rules to use more than one arm anyway, so he was beaten by strength in numbers and a clever use of loopholes, he did get an impressive score of 187 kilograms, however, which was actually behind Momo's five hundred kilogram industrial clamp.

Whether she was making these things, or could simply store them in her body, Izuku was nonetheless impressed.

Next came the standing long jump, and even though the greenette was sure he could win if the score kept going after the sand pit, he could just use Stinkfly, a four legged insect-like form with large green wings, to fly for a good ten minutes, clearing the pit was clearing the pit, regardless of how much you did it by, so quite a few people were sitting in first place for that event, including Katsuki, who could somehow fly now, not that Izuku had been keeping track of what he could do for a while, but the fact that his explosions were now powerful enough that he could sustain flight without sustaining damage was impressive, despite how begrudging Izuku was to admit it.

Alongside him and Katsuki at the top were the sparkly blonde boy, Aoyama, who shot himself over the pit with his laser, Tsuyu, who could actually jump very very far, like scary far, Ochako, who removed her own gravity and made it across, before puking out her breakfast, and finally one Shoto Todorki, who Izuku suspected had ties with the number two hero, Endeavour, but needed further confirmation.

The boy simply made an ice bridge and walked across the gap, which was apparently a legal move, despite not involving jumping of any kind.

Izuku didn't manage beat Momo this time, her use of a pogo stick was rather impressive, but unfortunately for her, pogo sticks could not fly.

The fourth event, sustained sideways jumps was taken by the short purple haired boy.

As much as it pained Izuku to admit, such small and precise movements were not particularly easy to do with XLR8's wheels, or the rather bulky or simply unathletic form of most of his transformations.

So he simply chose to preserve transformation time and do it in person, which left him in the middle band of participants despite his physical condition being quite good.

He beat Momo though, she had certain bodily aspects that made rapid jumping from side to side rather troublesome, if not hypnotic to watch.

Not that Izuku was watching.

Definitely not.

The girl really should have closed her uniform jacket after making that industrial clamp.

For the fifth event, Izuku was quite convinced his score of over two kilometres would gain him a first place, until Ochacko threw the ball infinity meters away.

Izuku did not want to question the physics behind that, so he simply contented himself with congratulating his friend with her ridiculous score, he wasn't bitter at all, despite how lazy awarding an infinity was…

At least Momo didn't beat him, she sure did try with the hand held cannon thing she made, but it wasn't quite enough to get a higher score than the greenette.

Sit ups and seated toe touch were the next two tests, and they ended up similar to the sustained sideways jumps, as in Izuku had to do them himself, it begged the question, however, of how anyone could actually use their quirk to do sit-ups more efficiently, he supposed having the ability to stretch your limbs could facilitate toe touching, but again, he had no idea what the point of using super powers to touch your toes was, so he chose to save his transformation time yet again.

His scores weren't bad, especially not in the sit-ups department, he was quite close to the top, but some of the girls were simply much more flexible than him and so he had to concede victory of the toe touches as well.

He'd lost to Momo again, not that he was counting.

The last event, however, was the one Izuku was the most bitter about, the endurance race, he honestly thought he had this one in the bag, run for about seven minutes until he inevitably ran out of transformation time, the constant use of the watch and non stop physical activity had no doubt taken a toll on his time limit, and then push the last needed minutes in human form.

He doubted anyone could run for that long without rest.

Izuku didn't come first.

He was beat by someone, Momo Yaoyorozu was her name, when she produced a BMX from under her shirt and leisurely rode her bike around the track until Izuku's Wildmutt, a large, orange, dog like transformation ran out, a form he had only taken because running like a dog was oddly satisfying and less taxing than doing it as a human, and the boy himself ran out of energy minutes after.

He'd decided, Momo would be his Jack-of-all-trades rival.

Their battle would be legendary.

At the end of the day, he did manage to get first place, followed closely by the girl who had just beat him, but the perfectionist in him was severely unhappy.

He did understand his forms weren't omnipotent, but he'd honestly expected a better performance on his own part when using them, he supposed he had a long way to go still.

Speaking about long ways to go, Izuku looked on at the small purple haired boy in pity as he absolutely bawled his eyes out for coming in last place.

It surprised the green haired boy actually, since a lot of people didn't have quirks that helped them in the trials at all, like the invisible girl, granted she came nineteenth, but Izuku thought demolishing one of the trials would have been worth a substantial amount of points.

Then again the small boy was absolutely abysmal at most of the other trials due to his ridiculously small stature and honestly sub-par physical ability.

"By the way, no one is getting expelled, that was a logical ruse, to pull out your best performances."

The class collectively yelled in protest.

"C'mon guys, use your brains! Of course it was just a ruse." Momo added matter-of-factly.

So she saw through it did she?

Well Izuku wasn't about to be one upped by his new, self-proclaimed rival.

"You gotta admit his acting was top notch though." the boy added giving Ochacko's shoulder a few pats in hopes of getting her to pick up her jaw, and to mask the revelation that he had read way too much into his teacher's character and should have just stopped when he marked him as too lazy to follow through.

Maybe the non-existent class 2-A had been in some horrible training accident

"Well with that it's over." Aizawa said finally, away to head back into the U.A building. "Your curriculum sheets are back in the classroom so give them a once-over."

With that the students of 1-A watched their enigmatic homeroom teacher stalk away.

"That was more nerve wracking than the entrance exam, don't you think Izuku?" Ochaco asked her friend.

"I agree, imagine being expelled on the first day, that would be sooooo much worse than failing to get in at the first place eh Midori?"

Izuku regarded the pink skinned girl, Mina, that had basically accosted him after the trials, singing praises about how awesome his quirk was and giving him a nickname that he definitely appreciated more than Deku, but had to give an F for effort.

Eventually he would have to admit to being quirkless, but the school was well aware, and his classmate's reactions was one headache he didn't really want to deal with just yet, especially not if he had to tell them in small groups and deal with the headache more than once.

He'd wait until he had them all in one place to save time, it totally wasn't because he was concerned with how they would treat him when they found out, not at all.

Mina was as upbeat as they came though, maybe a little too upbeat, if the greenette was concerned, but she seemed to get on well with Ochaco, so his opinion was kept to himself, plus it wasn't a particularly bad thing, just a new set of social interactions Izuku needed to get used to.

"I think it was really MANLY!" A red haired boy by Eijiro Kirishima yelled right into Izuku's ear, causing the boy to take a deep breath in order to calm himself down after he was able to hold down the need to jump to the roof out of surprise.

Izuku was glad to have friends, he really was, but Mina and her so called 'horn buddy' were louder than he liked, they were good people, he could tell, just very very loud.

"I honestly expected something like what we just did." Izuku said nonchalantly, "being a hero is a high stress occupation, I'm not surprised they're preparing us for it with such extreme measures."

The three other teens looked at Izuku in contemplation as if what he had just said was some kind of great discovery.

He was just glad Iida wasn't here, the speedster running off to find his curriculum at the earliest convenience, the rather diligent boy would no doubt have gone off on some tangent congratulating the boy for his deep insight, and then Izuku wouldn't have been able to resist being an ass to him.

He meant nothing by it, but Iida was just really easy to tease, it didn't help that the boy didn't seem to recognize that he was being teased, and continued presenting more opportunities for teasing.

Izuku was sure they would be great friends, but the by did horrors to his new found 'be less of an ass' goal.

Being popular was strange.

That was what Izuku had learned today.

That and Momo's quirk was bullshit, that was an important piece of factual information, no bias there at all.

Luckily for Izuku's ears, the rest of the journey back to the classroom was spent in relative quiet, the four teens trading small talk, and getting to know each other better without anymore exclamations being made.

They were all raring to go home and relax, whilst Izuku was mentally filing away everything he'd seen today to add to his notebooks, learning to counter his classmates was important for the upcoming sports festival.

Which had oddly been completely forgotten by most of his peers, maybe they were too excited by just being here in U.A to think that far into the future, but All Might had won every festival he had participated in, so Izuku had made it his goal to do the same.

Unfortunately, Izuku wasn't able to go home right away, because staring right at him with an intense red gaze was Katsuki Bakugou, standing between him and his school curriculum.

In a tone so quiet he would not have attributed to his ex bully in this lifetime the boy rasped a few words that caused Izuku's barely contained anxiety to resurface.

"Deku, you fucking nerd, me and you need to have a little talk."


	9. Chapter 9

The silence in the empty classroom was rather jarring for Izuku.

He'd never been in such close proximity with Katsuki without something exploding or the blonde yelling his head off, and now that his friends had all left to go home, he was left completely without the buffer of being in a group, which did not bode well for his confidence.

It annoyed him to think that despite all he'd been through he was still the scared little kid he had always been, well except for the fact that he got annoyed at people a lot faster than before, which wasn't exactly completely his own fault, it was a mixture between not having much social interactions with people his age, and the occasional bouts of hyper intelligence he experienced whilst he messed about as grey matter. It made him unaccustomed to the occasional moments of immaturity his fellow students exhibited, and caused him to see certain very common social issues as rather inane and easily avoidable.

He still couldn't escape them if he tried, socially inept as he was, unless he spent all his time as grey matter, but he was trying to cut back on how long he spent as the small grey humanoid, it was seriously messing with his head.

One didn't just forget being a super genius after all, so it had a few effects on Izuku's mind that he'd ignored since they didn't particularly seem negative, but he was quickly realising that, thanks to the increased amount of time he was now spending around others, that it was seriously stunting his already terrible ability to interact with people.

"S-so, what did you want to talk about?" Izuku forced out, trying to break the silence, even though he was very sure of what Katsuki wanted to converse about, it was definitely about the thing he wore on his wrist at all times.

Izuku couldn't help but wince at the sudden return of his stuttering, honestly he should have paid for speech therapy or something.

"Your quirk, where the fuck did you get it from?" Katsuki asked in ironically quiet anger, which really only served to make Izuku more nervous than he already was.

The green haired boy felt the same as when he got in trouble with his mother and she just kind of looked at him in disappointment instead of screaming at him, it grated his nerves to no end.

Which was rather rare, since his mother liked to get quite vocal, and wash the entire floor and sometimes the walls with tears when Izuku got into trouble.

Not that Izuku was even considering likening his reaction to Katsuki's own brand of parental guilt tripping to that of his actual parent, it was just a weird analogy his anxiety addled mind was bringing to the forefront of his mind to distract him from the fact he was likely to have a scuffle with his classmate in the near future.

Izuku quickly produced the pre formulated lie he'd created to mask his sudden abilities.

"Turns out I've always had it, but I couldn't use it voluntarily, ten months ago it just activated on it's own, but I can't use it without this watch." The green haired boy said, showing his friend the black and grey contraption he usually kept under the sleeve of his uniform.

It was a different lie than he told his mother or Ochacko, because what he told them was the closest he could get to the truth without telling his mother and best friend that he had found some random, alien device on the floor and now literally showered with the thing on.

"Don't give me that bullshit Deku." Katsuki growled, grabbing the other boy by the collar, "I wasn't born fucking yesterday, quirks manifest at age four and no later, especially your mutant type quirk, that shit should have been around from birth."

Honestly, Izuku should have known that tricking Katsuki wasn't going to be easy.

"O-okay, okay, it's not a quirk, the watch takes care of all the transformations and the forms, but it's keyed to my DNA only, in fact the thing doesn't even come off, that's the truth, I swear" Izuku pleaded, he hated himself for it, hated how easily he had caved in front of the blonde, but no amount of pretending he was confident, and no amount of dickish comments could help him get over years of bullying and trauma.

He was just lucky he had managed to throw in some lies about his DNA that would hopefully stop Katsuki from trying to steal the watch.

"You swear it do you? Pray tell where did someone like you, find something like this?" Katsuki interrogated, baring down menacingly on the other boy.

"A family friend gave it to me to test it out, I'm helping him figure out some of the kinks." Izuku lied through his teeth, he was not happy at how he was basically being forced to reveal his secrets, even if he was lying, Katsuki fully expected him to just give in to his demands, and he did, like he had always done.

He'd played right into his hands, and that pissed the green haired boy off greatly.

"Well you better not be fucking lying to me Deku, or else…" the sentence went unfinished as Katsuki released a few threatening crackles from his palm.

That was the final straw.

That sound of small explosions that Katsuki had always used to threaten him when he was a child, a sound that heralded bruises and burns, many of which Izuku had yet to truly heal from.

Years of bullying, gone unchecked and unpunished.

Izuku clenched his fist in anger, the force he exhibited so strong that he could feel his nails almost breaking skin.

His anger was not only aimed towards his tormentor but also towards himself.

Things should have been different now.

He was strong now.

He had powers now.

He shouldn't be the one cowering and getting roughed up anymore, he should be the one stopping this kind of thing from happening, standing proud and protecting the innocent, but how could he save anyone if he couldn't even save himself?

How could he stand shoulder to shoulder with the next generation of heroes, his classmates, his friends, if he cowered and bent over backwards in front of a simple bully, villains would be much worse, because whilst Katsuki barely followed the rules, the bad guys didn't follow any rules at all.

Izuku looked at the blonde in front of him darkly.

His slowly reached up and grabbed the hand that was holding his collar, his grip tightening as much as it could.

Izuku relished in the look of surprise and hints of pain in Katsuki's eyes.

"Or else what Katsuki?" Izuku growled, sick of letting himself just be bullied. "You're going to beat me up?" The boy began pushing back against Katsuki's hold, much to the blonde's surprise. "I'm sick of you always pushing me around, thinking you're better than me. Things have changed you yellow porcupine haired bastard, this is U.A and last time I checked, not only did we both get a spot here, I scored higher than you in the exam." The boy's voice grew louder as he poured his grievances into his speech. "I'm not beneath you anymore, I'm no longer your punching bag, the roles have reversed in fact. Now I'm the strongest, I'm ahead." Katsuki's eyes widened at the surprising strength Izuku could exhibit without using his transformations and he felt himself actively have to push against the green haired boy in order to not get forced back. "This is a declaration of war you firework factory reject, the sports festival, me and you, sorting this out once and for all, until then I don't know you, you don't know me, try this shit again and I won't only hurt you, I will demolish you, consequences be damned."

Izuku let go of his former friend, emerald green that burnt with determination staring and startled and angry red.

"Do you understand?" Izuku asked coldly, activating his watch threateningly.

Katsuki paused for a second, disbelief marking his face, Deku had just stood up to him?

Him?

He'd called him inferior, he'd belittled him, he'd declared himself better than him.

Katsuki was as shocked as he was angry.

Deep down, however, he knew.

He knew Izuku was right.

The blonde had contented himself on the fact that his quirk was so versatile, that his ever growing arsenal would be able to compensate for Izuku's own seemingly infinite abilities.

But then he'd seen Izuku fly over the sand pit, not propel himself in the air like Katsuki did, which was as far as the boy saw himself going when it came to flying, but the green haired boy had actually flown, with wings, with a speed and stability that Katsuki couldn't hope to match.

That wasn't even all, because as it turned out Izuku had another form, and whilst the blonde hadn't seen the full capabilities of the dog like creature, he was willing to bet it had some bullshit power that Katsuki could never hope to emulate.

He wanted nothing more than to blow that stupid determined looked off the boy's nerdy face, but he relented that if boy transformed he would be hard pressed to beat him right now, which caused him a rather substantial amount of displeasure.

Ever since the slime villain incident, Katsuki's inferiority complex flared up with impunity, being humiliated like that, and in public no less, had not at all been healthy for the volatile cocktail of personality traits the boy possessed.

People redoubling this effect by asking him about it whenever they saw him had just made it worse.

Alongside the constant reminder of his weakness that was his throat, the event weighed heavily on the blonde.

What made it worse was the fact that Izuku, the worthless, quirkless reject, was making his complex flare more than the villain attack that had brought it to light.

That made Katsuki boil with rage.

Which in turn made him do something he knew was stupid.

"Okay, you fucking nerd, you think you can beat me? Then I'll accept your challenge, but if I win, I want you gone, I want you to drop out of U.A and go back to being the loser you've always been, instead of playing at being a hero." Katsuki growled, "How about it? Since you suddenly grew a pair of balls, are you brave enough to accept?"

Izuku smirked.

Katsuki could not believe his eyes, not a hint of fear nor hesitation, somehow the green haired boy had managed to piss him off even more.

"You know what, I accept." Izuku said coldly. "But, if I win, I want you to drop out, after all, if you can't even beat a useless Deku, then what use are you as a hero?" Izuku countered.

Katsuki knew the greenette would counter him like that, and the problem was, he wasn't fully sure he could beat him as he was now, not without spending every waking moment training, and he knew that Izuku was likely bitter enough to find a way to force him to follow through on the bet if the blonde lost, because that was exactly what he would do to the green haired boy if the shoe was on the other foot.

Katsuki had trapped himself into a corner, and he knew it, but backing out now was unacceptable, he needed to cling to the remainder of his pride.

So he simply snorted in annoyance and brushed past the other boy violently.

Leaving the room after slamming the door as violently as he could, hoping the loud noise somehow translated to him winning the argument they just had.

As soon as the blonde had left the room, Izuku practically melted into a nearby chair.

He had just agreed to something stupid and he knew it, Katsuki was strong, probably stronger than even the blonde himself knew.

Beating him in a full on fight would be difficult, but Izuku knew Katsuki's quirk probably better than he knew his own powers, in fact, he probably knew them better than their own user, so he knew what was needed to counter his old childhood friend.

In fact, the boy would go so far as to admit that he had the perfect form for the job, but underestimating Katsuki was a poor choice, the blonde was the worst and best kind of person when it comes to this kind of thing, arrogant and stubborn, which made him very hard to deal with both in the social sense, and in the combat sense.

Izuku knew his ex bully would train himself to the bone to be proven right, and he was sure Katsuki had never actually done that before, since the boy viewed himself as a genius he probably coasted through life by working just as hard as he thought he needed to.

Now the greenette had probably convinced him that how hard he needed to push himself was a lot harder than it was before, which Izuku supposed was good, his entire goal for being a hero was to set an example and force other heroes to work harder in order to catch up.

If only he hadn't staked his career at U.A, he could enjoy the moment more.

For now he needed to beat Katsuki, and the only problem he could think of was that the sports festival spanned hours, and the last competition was always tournament brackets, which would be continuously more straining on his transformation time, so the later he got to Katsuki, the less time he would be able to stay transformed.

What he needed now was to boost his transformation time, and probably give his forms a quick tune up combat wise.

The only way to do that was to train.

To beat Katsuki he would need to train more than anyone.

The boy didn't want it any other way.


	10. Chapter 10

Life at U.A was actually surprisingly mundane.

For a school teaching kids how to be superheroes it focused a lot on normal subjects like english and maths.

Granted even the most common topic was taught by a pro hero, which was great for Izuku's fanboy side, but even the wonder that brought him eventually wore off.

Now he was just sat in a normal high school lesson, the excitement and tension of yesterday a thing of the past.

He felt his time could be better used by training for the sports festival, especially now that he was banking a lot on winning the thing, and as a true hero nerd, Izuku was literally losing sleep over the anticipation of being in the event he looked forward to watching every year.

Plus he'd upped his training to make sure he was as prepared as he could be and therefore had decreased the amount of time he spent sleeping even more, which he was sure was perfectly healthy.

Lunch was probably the most decent thing that had happened so far on that day, enjoying good food with actual friends was new, but not unwelcome, it had actually elevated his mood quite a bit.

The green haired boy found it strangely enjoyable to just sit around and laugh with his new group of friends, Mina somehow just never ran out of topics to talk about, whilst the very differing opinions of Kirishima and Iida helped keep the conversation fresh and varied.

He could do with less exclamations of how manly something was, or Iida's sometimes down right religious way of sticking to the rules, or even Mina's never ending teasing.

Girls would always be hard to deal with for Izuku, especially when you were as prone to going red faced as he was.

The group dynamic was not perfect, but Izuku wouldn't trade it for the world.

Although if there was one thing he was concerned for, it Ochako's nutrition, since she seemed to be eating nothing but a bowl of white rice.

He was quite aware of the girl's financial situation, and had tried to help her before, but the girl was rather stubborn when it came to accepting free things from others, even though she knew for a fact that Izuku was minted to the point where he actually ran out of ideas for the money, he had started donating like 90% of his earnings to charity since he had always lived quite the frugal life, and any form of extravagance outside of parts for building random machines that he needed for training, ludicrously expensive hero paraphernalia, and stupidly luxurious couch cushions was lost on the boy.

Realistically, he should have stopped abusing his powers for monetary gain after he had enough money to let his mother live a comfortable life.

But she had refused to retire early, and Izuku really really liked owning shares of hero merchandise companies.

He was actually surprised that the media hadn't hunted him down to put him on the front of some magazine yet, the boy hadn't covered his tracks as well as he could have done, just enough that people wouldn't be able to find him just by looking him up in the phone book.

He was sure there was plenty he could do with all the money he kept making, but he felt that donating a large portion of it was a good and simple way for him to help people before he could legally go out into the streets and use his powers.

He found that the best way to help out his friend was to blindside her with stuff, the girl was stubborn, but he had never known her to say no to free food, especially not mochi, the girl really really liked her mochi, like a scary amount.

This was why Izuku had feigned going to the toilet and came back with a plate of curry that he placed in front of his friend without uttering a word and using surprising stealth.

Ochako frowned at him slightly, used to this trick by now, before giving a resigned sigh, and smiling at her friend.

"Thank you Deku-Kun."

Izuku froze.

Which did not go unnoticed by any of the teens at the table.

"W-what did you just call me?" The green haired boy croaked.

Ochako blinked in confusion at her friend's reaction. "I called you Deku, is it not your childhood nickname or something, I saw Bakugou call you it a few times yesterday, and it looked like you two knew each other."

Relief washed over Izuku, it was just a harmless misunderstanding, which was good, he hadn't been about to panic and lose his shit or anything, no not at all.

Really he should have told Ochako more about his childhood, just to avoid situations like this one, but those memories weren't exactly his favourite, so he tended to just avoid the subject whenever it came up.

"O-oh right," Izuku said, slinking down into his chair, "yeah me and Bakugou have known each other for a long time, and Deku is my childhood nickname, but…" Izuku paused, taking a deep breathe, not exactly sure how to approach this topic. He decided that the best way was to just clench his teeth and get it done.

"Well it not so much a nickname as it is an insult." Izuku began, "it's a different reading of my name that's meant to mean wooden doll or puppet, people used to call me it because when I was younger I wasn't really good at anything, so they the kids would call me useless." The boy said sadly, this got a collective gasp from the group.

"How disgraceful," Iida began, "with a quirk as powerful as your's it brings me great surprise that you would still be bullied."

"Well that's the thing, I don't actually have a quirk." Izuku revealed, causing his friends to be greatly shocked.

"So how do you transform into all those cool aliens?" Mina asked curiously.

"Aliens? I don't quite think they're from outer space Ashido-san." Izuku stated, eager to shift the subject.

"Well I'm not from outer space either, but I look kind of like an alien don't I? I think it's quite cool actually." The girl continued.

Izuku pondered on this for a second, it was true that calling his other forms just forms was a little lackadaisical, plus the watch did look really futuristic, and came from the sky.

He liked the idea of calling his forms aliens.

"Now tell me how it works." The girl demanded, the look in her eye saying she wouldn't let a good scoop just escape her grasp.

"Well, you might have noticed that I'm always wearing and fiddling with this watch here, well it gives me the ability to transform, I don't know how it does it exactly, but a friend of mine made it a few months back, and I've been testing it out for him." Izuku said. "But, yeah, I'm sorry if I reacted strongly, Deku just isn't something I like being called."

"Oh, I'm sorry Izuku-kun, I just thought it meant something cool, it sounds a lot like Dekiru, you know, you can do it." Ochako said apologetically.

Izuku reflected on her statement, it did kind of sound like that, and maybe giving the name a new meaning would help him alleviate some of the trauma it carried.

"I actually like the thought of that. You know what, you can call me it if you like, if nothing else it will serve to piss off Bakugou." Izuku said, much to Ochako's visible relief, before going back to his meal.

Lunch was turning out to be his favourite subject.

Unfortunately for the boy, lunch time ended far too soon in Izuku's opinion, and so he found himself back in his classroom, waiting for the next lesson to start.

He had high hopes for the next class however, since the theoretical portion of the day had ended, and now it was time for the less conventional school hours.

"**I AM HERE, walking through the door like a normal person.**"

This booming voice was what heralded the start of the lesson Izuku had been looking forward to since the start of the day.

Following it was the imposing figure of All Might in what Izuku recognised as his silver age hero costume, Izuku idly wondered if he would be able to buy the thing off the hero when he retired.

As much as he was wary of what would happen to society when their symbol of peace retired, Izuku was very much aware that the number one hero was nowhere near his prime, the image of the man in his sunken, weakened form would forever be burnt into his memory.

He'd somewhat come to terms with the interaction he and the number one hero had all those months ago, he understood that All Might was likely stressed from having to keep such a big secret from the public, and was likely very jaded by his years as a hero.

Izuku had no misconceptions about how traumatic the line of work he was going into would be.

So trying to stave a weak and powerless child from such a dangerous profession was likely, in the man's eyes at least, the most heroic action he could have taken in the situation.

Izuku was still more than a little bitter about it, however.

Especially now that he had seen for himself how far he had come with just a little bit of help.

The pro hero could have simply told the boy that if he wanted to be a hero he needed to work harder than he was currently, train his body and not just his mind, plenty of heroes fought basically quirkless after all, Sir Nighteye, the symbol of peace's old sidekick was a prominent example, sure he could tell the future by touching someone, but what did his power provide in terms of combat really?

Predicting his opponent's next move, sure, but if he couldn't even touch his opponent, or react to said move, what help was his quirk really?

The man could have even offered to help the boy somehow, although this scenario was perhaps wishful thinking, he doubted All Might had the time to simply help all his fans with something like training.

Bottom line, outright telling the boy he had no hope of following his dream was rather reckless of the man.

He had no clue what Izuku could have done if he got desperate enough, and truth be told if the watch hadn't quite literally fell from the sky, neither did the greenette.

Which was a scary thought.

So whilst Izuku wasn't as hateful to the man as he was initially, how could you stay mad at that smile really, he still aimed to reach the point where he could beat him in a fight just to prove him wrong, if only All Might's quirk wasn't so bullshit that not even four arms could match him in strength.

The boy greatly anticipated the day where his brawniest alien reached that point.

The rest of his class were quite excited to have All Might as a teacher, for good reason Izuku supposed, almost everyone loved the guy.

"**FOUNDATIONAL HERO STUDIES!**" All Might continued, flexing his muscles for some odd reason "**FOR THIS CLASS, WE'LL BE BUILDING UP YOUR FOUNDATION THROUGH VARIOUS TRIALS!**" The pro hero continued. "**LET'S JUMP RIGHT IN WITH THIS! THE TRIAL OF BATTLE!"**

That surprised Izuku, he would have thought they would have gone through some basic combat drills to assess each person individually first, but he supposed pitting teenagers against each other would also be quite effective.

"**To go with your first battle… We've prepared the gear we had you send in requests for to match you quirks.**"

The mention of his hero costume greatly excited the class, Izuku was no exception, he was looking forward to how the support department had brought his concept to life.

"**Get changed and we'll be ready to go! Everyone go gather at ground beta!"**

The class scrambled to grab their individual suitcases, each displaying their excitement in their own way.

Izuku personally chose to cradle his one like a baby.

In a lot less time than it took them yesterday, the class managed to get fully dressed and find their way to where they needed to be rather quickly.

Izuku still managed to lag behind them, however, because as it turned out he was terrible with any pieces of clothing that involved the neck.

Thankfully it managed to make a rather dramatic scene as the so far top student ran up the tunnel and emerged into the afternoon light in all his costumed glory.


	11. Chapter 11

Izuku felt real dapper.

The costume fit him like a glove, and it looked exactly as he had envisioned it.

He's stuck to a black and white theme with certain green highlights, to match his watch, he thought that since he had to wear it all the time whether he wanted to or not his costume might as well go well with it.

The costume itself came in two pieces, a full body suit, form the neck down it had a black triangle that settled into a white chest area, which itself became black again at the waist. The costume was black up to his elbows with white fingers, that were armoured at the knuckles, and he had white boots with steel soles, heels and toes.

There were green protrusions which served as storage for first aid equipment, emergency rations, just in case, which were stored in the ones on the side of his boots.

In the ones on his forearm, Izuku had small canisters that contained sleeping gas for quickly neutralising indoor targets.

Corners were dangerous.

He wore an emerald green scarf around his neck, mostly because as much as he wanted a cape, he realised that having something that big of a distraction attached to him just because he thought it looked cool when it billowed in the wind.

Finally, he had a simple white helmet with two conical shaped protrusions coming from the sides, which acted as a way for Izuku to listen to the radio, which he hoped to one day link to the police feed, and communicate with linked devices, he connected his phone to it for good measure.

The helmet's visor was shaped like the triangular hourglass on the front of the inactivated watch, and a mouth piece that could provide oxygen in case of gas based attack or sudden loss of atmospheric pressure.

A lot of the tech was his own, since the school couldn't condone using so much budget on one student, and Izuku wanted to keep the fact he had access to a vast amount of funds somewhat over wraps, but the support department had done a wonderful job at putting the whole thing together.

He'd use Upgrade to give it a once over and any final tune ups later on, but for now he wanted to give this baby a test drive without undermining the work that was put into it by his fellow U.A students.

"Woah dude, that's such a manly costume!" Kirishima exclaimed as he gave Izuku a friendly slap on the back.

"Thanks man," Izuku replied, "you're looking cool as heck."

The black trousers with red highlights and red gears around his shoulders really did suit the redhead.

"You too Iida, following in the legacy of your family I see." Izuku remarked, noticing how the tall boy was donning white armour similar to the current Ingenium.

"Thank you Midoriya, it brings me great pride to carry on the Iida family name." The boy said with his usual responsible tone.

"Cool man, but like, isn't there an Ingenium right now? What is your hero name going to be?" Izuku questioned curiously, Ingenium was a name passed down from generation to generation, and the title was usually held by the oldest member, or whoever became a hero first.

There could only be one Ingenium, so Izuku was unsure of what Iida was planning to do, especially since the boy hadn't thought to add any flair of uniqueness to his costume.

"Ah, that is a good point my friend, you don't mind if I ask you for help on the matter once the time comes to decide those things?" Iida asked seemingly unconcerned.

Izuku was of the opinion that a hero persona wasn't simply brewed over night, but if Iida wanted to play it by ear than so be it.

"Sure thing bud, where are the girls at?" Izuku asked, eager to see what Ochako and Mina had chosen for their costumes.

"Over there, having girl talk I think. Not that I can decipher what they're on about." Kirishima said, motioning over to where the six girls of U.A were gathered, talking in seemingly hushed tones.

Well, Mina was talking, and Izuku assumed Toru was as well since someone was talking back but no one else's lips were moving.

The green haired boy was just glad he was wearing full face helmet, because he was sure that at that moment people would mistake him for four arms from how red in the face he had gotten.

He'd heard about and seen over sexualisation of female heroes, but he'd never seen it on girls he knew personally, or his own age.

From a realistic outlook, it was wrong to do this to fifteen year old girls, but the hormones raging around in his brain were perfectly fine with it.

Too fine with it if anything.

From Jirou's quite conservative punk look that suited her really well, and that low cut shirt that revealed the tender white skin of her collar bone.

To Tsuyu and Ochako's full body skin tight suits that hugged their curves tightly.

Mina's low cut jumpsuit.

Momo's, well, Izuku was unsure what to call Momo's costume, he supposed it was a leotard, but then barely so.

Finally there was Toru, who was quite literally wearing gloves and shoes, which he supposed was because she was invisible, but he was sure the girl would go through hell in the winter.

He quite literally had to tear his eyes away from the scene, his penchant for analysing anything hero like backfiring horribly as he couldn't stop himself from drinking in the forms of his female classmates.

It made him feel like Mineta.

It was a horrible sensation.

"ALL RIGHT YOU ZYGOTES! Let's see what you're made of. Today's trial will be an indoor battle trial." All Might began, before explaining the rules to the trial.

Izuku found it an interesting concept, having hero students to behave like villains, maybe to allow them to think like villains, it was important to know your enemy after all.

They proceeded to select teams by drawing lots, which saw Izuku on team H, paired up with a boy called Tokoyami Fumikage, who had the curious feature of having a bird head that looked rather intimidating.

"All right, Young Midoriya and Young Tokoyami on team H, you will be the first hero team, whilst Young Hagakure and Young Ojiro will be the villain team." All might called out, Izuku was getting a few spots of anxiety for having to go first, but his excitement did quite a bit in helping him expunge them from his system. "Villain team please head inside you have five minutes to prepare, the non participating members of the class please follow me to the observation room."

This left the newly appointed partners alone to plan their assault.

Honestly, Izuku would have liked to have been paired up with someone he knew, like Ochako, since they had a pre-existing chemistry from the few times they had trained together.

Perhaps traditional teens didn't hang out by creating devastation combo moves, but Izuku was far from conventional, he also had no clue how to hang out with people, but Ochako seemed to have enjoyed bringing ruin to a beach, so he was sure his hosting abilities weren't terrible.

But, she had been paired with Tsuyu, and the two girls seemed to be hitting it off quite well.

Despite being slightly disappointed that the world would not be able to bear witness to their ultimate combination move: Asteroid belt just yet, the boy supposed meeting new people was important, it helped that Tokoyami's quirk was actually rather interesting from what Izuku had gathered, this was a good opportunity to get more detailed information on it.

"Tokoyami right?" Izuku began, deciding that introducing himself was a good first step.

"Indeed, you are Midoriya, is that correct?" The bird boy asked back.

Izuku was glad everything was going good so far, he just had to follow his plan of attack, and him and his new partner would be friends in no time.

"Yep that's me, so based on what I saw of your quirk, you have some kind of sentient shadow right?" Izuku questioned, really wishing he had his notebooks, in fact, if he compiled them all to digital form and added some form of display to his costume, he could have access to them at all times, he filed that away as a project for the near future.

"Yes, that is dark shadow, the manifestation of my inner darkness, come out and say hello." The boy said before a shadow with a head in the same shape as its owner came out from under Tokoyami's cloak.

"Yo! Are you one of Fumikage's friends? Boy have I got some embarrassing stories to tell you." The shadow creature said rather animatedly.

Tokoyami gave it a chop on the head for its effort.

"Anyway, Midoriya, how does you quirk work?" The bird boy asked.

"Well using this watch I can transform into anyone one of ten forms, it's quite simple really, but the ability is quite versatile." Izuku said, refraining from going through the whole, it's not a quirk shebang again, really he needed to round up all his classmates and explain it to them all at once. "I've come up with a plan using them actually." The green haired boy stated.

"Do go on." Tokoyami remarked.

"Well, Hagakure is probably our biggest issue in this situation, her invisibility is quite annoying to deal with, but do you remember that orange dog thing I turned into for the endurance race?" Izuku asked, to which Tokoyami nodded, "Well, I call it Wildmutt, and basically, it has a very keen sense of smell and hearing, which basically hard counters Hagakure, so how about I deal with finding the bomb and capturing her, whilst you deal with Ojiro?"

"Sounds good, I reckon that if I use the element of surprise, Ojiro will stand no chance against my darkness." Tokoyami stated.

Izuku couldn't help but feel that the boy liked to be a tad dramatic, which wasn't a trait his friend group had yet.

Should he be collecting friends like they were Pokemon?

Izuku still hadn't quite figured that part out yet.

"So, should we enter through the front door?" Tokoyami asked.

Izuku smiled at the boy.

"Doors are for chumps."

Toru was not feeling good about her chances.

Tokoyami in itself would have been a problem, she'd been in the same test site as him for the entrance exam, and had noticed the boy using his quirk to quite literally tear a robot to shreds, she did not fancy her chances against that.

Luckily for her, she was invisible and could escape the problem all together, hopefully capturing the boy's before he realised she was even there.

Which was why she was going to go scouting as soon as the prep time ended.

Aside from Tokoyami, she had to face Izuku Midoriya, top student, and generally considered Class 1-A's badass, literally, it was the second day, and the boy was already a legend spoken about in mere whispers.

Well, the whispers were mostly because at no cost could girl talk be overheard by the boys, secrets were at stake.

Still, she'd seen him in the quirk apprehension test, any one of his aliens, as Mina like to call them, could probably end this trial singlehandedly.

The boy had crossed fifty meters in almost half a second, there wasn't much she could do to stop him if he just rushed for the bomb.

Ojiro was as calm as a lake somehow.

Toru did not understand whether he was confident or just resigned to his fate.

Once they heard the signal to start in their ear pieces, the invisible girl began to strip herself of what little clothes she was wearing.

Her sense of embarrassment was completely and utterly shot at this point, with being see-through and all, even still she made her partner look away as she did so, there was a difference between invisible streaking and stripping of course.

"Okay, Ojiro, I'm off to scout." The girl said happily, trying to mask the defeat in her voice, she didn't want to say it was utterly pointless, but she knew when she was outmatched, better to just get it over with and then have a good laugh about it with her friends.

Little did she know her wish was about to come true, because the next few seconds would probably be remembered as the single most sudden thing that happened in her life.

Just as the girl was about to leave, she briskly turned around at the sound of shattering glass and a heavy thump landing on the floor, her surprise expounded by the fact that they were on the top floor.

A large orange dog, that she quickly recognised as one of Izuku's alien forms, stared straight at her with his eyeless face.

She was just glad she was invisible, because the expression she was making was not exactly the most attractive face she had ever pulled.

Surprise and awe do not mix well.

Then Izuku pounced directly on her, as if he could see he clear as day.

She felt her arms being pinned down by two powerful limbs as a mouth full of fangs gave a low rumbling warning growl at her.

She then watched her partner rush over to help, only to be slapped aside by a shadowy black claw.

Being the rather skilled martial artist he was, the tailed boy managed to flip himself in the air and use his tail to stop his motion, before using the same limb to throw himself towards his assailant.

Tokoyami's shadow creature moved to intercept, but using an impressive display of acrobatics, Ojiro launched himself over the shadow beast and made a beeline for its Summoner.

The bird headed boy barely managed to cross his arms to defend himself, before Ojiro's tail slammed into him, sending him flying backwards onto his backside, realising a grunt of pain.

The tailed boy moved to finish the fight with the next move, but Tokoyami's dark creature wrapped around to stop him, the long tendril that connect it to Tokoyami wrapping around her teammate multiple times to restrain him.

"The villain team has been captured. The hero team is VICTORIOUS!"

Toru didn't want to say she had called it.

Except she totally did.


	12. Chapter 12

The four teens had now begun going over to the observation room for their debriefing.

Apologies for rough treatment and just general good sportsmanship was been traded between them.

"Sorry if I was a little too efficient with holding you down there Hagakure, are your arms okay?" Izuku asked the invisible girl in concern, he sometimes forgot that WildMutt had a variation of super strength, it wasn't quite as pronounced as Four Arms, but dog like creature could still easily dent steel.

"Oh, not to worry I'm fine." The girl replied, doing what Izuku assumed was holding her guns.

"Oh that's a relief, although quick question, are you not really cold in your hero costumes? I know it's summer and all but you're quite literally naked." The boy inquired.

"Ah well, not really, I'm used to running around like this." The girl admitted, causing Izuku to blush a little at the image, not that the girl could see it through his helmet. "Why the worry? Did you enjoy pinning down a naked girl, Izuku-kun?" The girl asked suddenly, pressing up against him.

Izuku jump away in surprise at feeling something soft touch his arm.

"N-n-n-no, I was just concerned for your well being." Izuku yelled in embarrassed protest.

Damning girls and their wily charms in his head.

"Pfffft." Toru couldn't hold back her laughter at the boy's reaction, "you know you act really cute for someone so strong." The girl said, which did not help Izuku's blush one bit.

Luckily for him they arrived at the observation room before the girl could continue assaulting him with her words.

"Welcome back students, now that you've arrived we can start your debriefing." All Might began, "Now can anyone tell me who the MVP for this trial was?"

Mom's hand shot up instantly.

"I believe it should go to Midoriya, whilst Tokoyami did manage to capture one of the villains, Midoriya ultimately came up with the plan, tracked the villains, carried his team mate up to the attack position, captured a villain by himself and allowed Tokoyami the chance to ambush his opponent which greatly facilitated the capture of their remaining enemy." The girl said, "although, I don't understand why he didn't simply disarm the weapon, since he obviously had the ability to do so."

"Very good young Yaoyorozu, I was about to inquire the same." All Might said, he wasn't actually, he thought the performance was quite good, until the girl had mentioned that fact, but he didn't want to embarrass himself on his first day.

All eyes turned to Izuku, waiting for the boy's response.

Izuku was acutely aware of the fact that his classmates seemed to hold him to a higher standard, and would pick at any mistakes he made with scrutiny. Probably because he'd been consistently in first place so far.

He supposed this was the pressure faced by being number one.

"Well, I just thought that if this were a real situation disarming the bomb without capturing the villains would be a bit pointless, since if the villains managed to one up the heroes afterwards they could just re-arm the weapon, also realistically speaking, disarming a bomb in the middle of a combat situation just seemed unrealistic. I also kind of just wanted to give Tokoyami a chance to stand out" Izuku said, rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment.

"Well whatever your reasons were, you handled the situation quite well. The villain team also had a somewhat solid plan despite not being able to execute it at all. Well done to all of you." All might praised, before reaching into the box containing the balls for the teams "NOW THEN, the next two teams are Young Todoroki and Young Shoji as the heroes, and Young Yaoyorozu and Young Mineta as the villains, please proceed to the building."

The teens in question went off to prepare for their upcoming trial, whilst those that remained settled back into their individual cliques.

Izuku removed his helmet, allowing himself a breath of relief, the things were useful, but that didn't make them any less stuffy.

"Way to go Deku-kun." Ochako said brightly as she came up to him, giving the green haired boy a high five, "This is Tsu, I'm sure you've seen her around in class before."

"I have, pleased to meet you Asui." Izuku smiled. "Let's get along."

"Call me Tsu, kero." The girl said simply.

Izuku noted that she was rather expressionless, despite her voice carrying a difficult to discern tinge of happiness, he supposed it had something to do with her quirk changing her facial structure, he was rather curious as to where she stored her tongue, but even he wasn't socially inept enough to ask a girl that.

"Oi, Midori, nice going as always."

Izuku turned towards Mina who was walking up to them with Kirishima in tow, he would have thought they would bring their own teammates over also, since the longer they spent figuring out how to work together, the better their chances in the upcoming trial, kind of like what Iida was trying to do, but then he'd been placed with Katsuki, and their personalities weren't the best match for a civilised conversation.

Izuku supposed, however, that being teens, people would also want to socialise with their friends, especially when watching something as cool as quirk combat.

"So, who do you think will win the next match?" The pink girl asked.

Izuku momentarily lingered on the skin that her costume exposed, before he snapped out of it and answered her question.

"O-oh, um well, it's hard to say, Todoroki has a lot of power behind his ice, if the way he used it yesterday is anything to go by, but Yaoyorozu has pure versatility on her side, especially since she's playing defence, five minutes is more than enough time for her to make quite the little stronghold." Izuku began, "but we have to remember that they aren't in this alone, as he's proven before, Shoji has massive amounts of strength, I'm not sure what else he can do, but his build alone is already a huge advantage when it comes to combat, on the other hand, Yaoyorozu has Mineta for a team mate, whilst his quirk probably allows him to move around quite quickly, I'm not sure what strength they have offensively, and to be honest, based on his results yesterday, he's probably the worst when it comes to physical conditioning, so he'll provide little help in a combat sense. It all hinges on how strong of a defence Yaoyorozu can build in five minutes."

Izuku stopped his explanation, noticing that his friends were looking at him with barely contained giggles.

"I started waffling again didn't I?" The greenette said sheepishly.

"Yup." Ochako giggled, patting her friend on the shoulder, "no worries though, it was all very educational."

"All right, Team B and Team C, battle start."

With All Might's words the class' attention moved to the big screen, which displayed both teams, taking up equal amounts of the image.

Izuku was correct about Momo created a huge amount of defences, all bar one of the entrances had been barricaded, an obvious attempt to create a choke point, behind said door was an automatic pitcher filled with cricket balls.

Todoroki, on the other hand, was simply strutting up to the building in a rather confident manner.

The boy placed his hand against the building, and, in the blink of an eye, flash froze the entire thing.

Izuku's jaw dropped.

He had never even considered that Todoroki was capable of such output, something like that was actually strong enough to threaten him as all but perhaps one of his aliens.

He now realised that maybe Katsuki was not his biggest problem in the sports festival.

Based on what he'd just seen, Todoroki's entire plan basically hinged on capturing his opponents with that flash freeze, since he simply strutted into the building without any caution whatsoever, it would seem that he knew exactly where his opponents were, which suggested that maybe he could sense through his ice, or perhaps his teammate had some form of tracking ability.

It seemed the boy was stupidly overconfident, because Momo had barely been affected by that attack, the scantily clad girl, despite looking like she was having a swell time freezing her well endowed body off, freed herself from the ice with a quickly manifested ice pick, before creating a winter jacket to protect herself from the cold as well as she could, her legs still being bare and all.

Meanwhile Todoroki had made a good amount of progress towards his goal, further cementing the fact that he knew where his opponents were, he was already on the right floor, and was skating his way towards them with a high speed.

As soon as the boy reached the corridor in front of the one door Momo had left open, he was caught by surprise by a cricket ball hitting him dead center at ninety miles per hour.

Causing the boy to slide back on the frictionless ice and land on his back from his loss of balance.

Losing his momentum meant that the boy was hard pressed to stand back up on his ice, especially before Momo rearmed her pitching machine and hit the boy again.

Todoroki growled in frustration, as he instead simply decided to send a huge wave of ice forward, causing Momo to have to jump aside to dodge it, unfortunately, her pitching machine got totalled in the process.

The girl looked in awe as the wave she had just been attacked with had travelled the entire corridor and the length of the room she was bunkered down in.

Todoroki took this opportunity to finally stand up properly, this time approached the room cautiously, as to not get ambushed by sports equipment.

The boy pressed a hand against the ice in front of the door and melted it to allow himself entry.

he carefully checked the room for any other presence, before he walked up to the downed girl, hand raised threateningly.

The teens in the observation room couldn't hear what was going on, but they assumed it was something to do with how the girl should surrender.

Whatever the girl replied caused Todoroki to shrug before he made his way towards the bomb, he went to place his hand on it which would have signalled the end of the trial, but when his palm reached the point of barely hovering over it, the bomb exploded, purple balls scattered all over the room, sticking all over Todoroki's body and sticking the boy against the wall at various points.

Izuku took note that what could only be the purple balls Mineta produced with his quirk had a sticky property to them.

Todoroki was visibly annoyed and confused.

Not as confused as the people watching, however, as All Might hadn't ended the match, despite it being pretty obvious the goal had just been pulverised.

"Was it a decoy?" Izuku asked curiously, noticing that they hadn't seen Mineta since the start of the match.

"That is correct Young Midoriya, an ingenious move, but I would be thankful if the rest of you refrained from using high payload explosions against unsuspecting opponents, Recovery girl would have my head if any of you got third degree burns."

The look of annoyance on Todoroki's face only got deeper, before he sent a wave of ice a Momo, firmly freezing the girl to the wall, pretty much capturing her for good, before he ripped off his shirt to release himself from the wall, revealing his well built body.

"Damn, I'd love me some of that!" Mina exclaimed.

Izuku looked at her oddly, before shifting his gaze to Kirishima right next to her, who had been shirtless this whole time.

He really did not understand girls…

Todoroki at this point had set off to look for the real bomb.

Izuku looked over to the second monitor in the room, seeing that it showed Shoji, who had obviously gotten tired of waiting outside at one point and had gone to look for the bomb himself, he used eyes and ears that grew from his arms to rapidly check each room.

The tall boy did make it eventually, but as soon as he arrived, a small figure fell from the roof and bombarded him with purple balls.

Shoji defended himself from Mineta's bombardment by covering himself with what Izuku could only call wings made from his arms.

He did eventually realise that the attack was harmless, but by that point it was too late.

"Time is up, Villain team wins." All Might declared.

The look of surprise on Todoroki's face was actually understandable, if Izuku had been in his shoes that would be the exact same face he would have made, Todoroki was definitely the strongest student in the current trial, and arguably the strongest in the class.

If the heterochromic flash froze the green haired boy before he could activate the watch, he would be done for, but if Izuku managed to transform, then it could go either way, especially if Izuku's theory that Todoroki could produce more than ice was true.

Eventually the four teens came back for their debriefing.

"Good effort everyone, who do we believe was this time's MVP?" All Might asked the remaining teens.

"Well it was obviously Yaoyorozu." Izuku said, "Her plan was solid, and she managed to stall Todoroki for enough time to win the match, all though, I'm not sure how it would have gone if Shoji had been with Todoroki, also, why a pitching machine? I've seen you pop out a cannon before."

"Ah, well, I didn't want to hurt one of my classmates too badly during a training exercise." The girl said sheepishly, looking away in embarrassment.

"But you used controlled explosives for a decoy?" Izuku asked incredulously.

"Oh, well, good point…" the girl said, a blush spreading across her face as her mistake was pointed out to her.

"Very good Young Midoriya, it wasn't a bad fight, but might I suggest better teamwork for the hero team next time." All Might added, before he reached into the the lot box once more, "All right the next match will be Team A as heroes, and Team D as villains."

For Izuku the world froze at that moment as he looked over to the two teams involved.

Katsuki was giving him his best feral grin.

Ochako was giving him a worried look.

There was no way Katsuki would go after other people because of their little feud right?

Izuku hoped he wasn't about to stoop so low just to get to him.

But then again, this was the boy who had systematically gone after and destroyed everything Izuku held dear, namely his notebooks, just to torture the greenette.

Katsuki would definitely go after Ochako just because Izuku had a special place in his heart for the girl, and there was nothing he could do to help his friend right now.

If Katsuki brought the pain down onto Ochako.

Izuku would make doubly sure to wipe the floor of the Sport's festival stage with the blonde's face until it was spotless.

And the green haired boy was not a gentle scrubber.


	13. Chapter 13

Ochako's plan was simple.

She might not have been the best person when it came to reading others, she liked to think the best of people after all, but she sure could tell when someone had it out for her, especially when they made no attempt to hide it.

Bakugou was coming for her.

Perhaps it was simply because she was friends with Deku, or perhaps it was the same interest he showed in destroying all his foes, but for whatever reason he seemed to have a vehement interesting in seemingly splattering her brains all over the corridors.

Okay, maybe she was being a little dramatic, but the blonde definitely wanted to hurt her, she could tell that much.

She wasn't scared of him, she was terrified, Izuku had told her stories, few and far between, and none of them had been about their interactions in the past, but she had been able to glean one fact from them.

Bakugou was strong.

Horribly so.

He wasn't Izuku level, of course, from her small understanding of the full extent of how amazing her best friend was, if Bakugou was a wolf, Izuku was a tiger.

But in that sense she might as well have been a kitten.

She knew she stood no chance against the blonde in a straight up fight, he could turn her into a dropped peanut butter jelly sandwich with one hit, but then she didn't have to fight him, just stall for time.

The plan she had so expertly come up with basically involved her running around distracting Bakugou, whilst Tsuyu located the bomb.

Despite Izuku's constant drilling of the fact that she should never split the party, the girl knew that even if her and Tsuyu teamed up, they couldn't beat Bakugou, let alone Bakugou and Iida together, they just didn't have that kind of synergy yet, now if her and Izuku were working together, they could have used Asteroid Belt, and blown their opponents away.

Ochako didn't particularly think training made for good meetups, and the boy always picked training when it was his turn to choose what they did, honestly, she was scared to see what Izuku would be like when he took a girl on a date, although that thought did bring a blush to her face for some reason.

She was quite glad that he'd gone over strategy with her, however, and the combo move they had made was probably one of the coolest things she had ever seen.

The Brunette hoped that Tsuyu could win against her engine legged friend, especially since they were indoors and the walls and ceiling would give her froggy friend the surfaces she needed to exploit her superior mobility.

The entire plan did hinge on that fact after all.

"You ready Ochako-chan." Tsuyu asked her, causing the girl to break out of her thinking, she looked over to her new friend and smiled.

"Yeah."

"BATTLE START!"

At All Might's signal, Ochako gave one last nod to her partner before running into the building, Tsuyu would scale the outside wall much in the same manner as Izuku had, but her entrance would be a little less loud since Ochako had no doubt that Iida was fast enough to react to that kind of ambush.

The brunette was as careful and as stealthy as she could be, the longer Bakugou took to find her, the less time she would have to survive his onslaught.

"Found you."

Unfortunately, he hadn't taken long at all.

Ochako barely managed to jump out of the way, narrowly dodging an explosion to the face. She quickly regained her footing before booking it down the corridor.

She could hear Bakugou on her tail from the explosions he was creating in order to speed himself up.

She barely saw the blonde rocket past her left, before he spun in the air to face the brunette and hit her with a bang.

Ochako barely managed to shield herself with her arms before she was knocked back by the force of the explosion, the girl slid on her back for a few meters before she activated her quirk on herself to float up and keep her backwards momentum, she floated away from the blonde who was quickly catching up to her.

As Bakugou arrived at her to release another explosion, the brunette flipped herself in the air and kicked off the roof using the springs in her heels for an extra kick, barely dodging the attack.

"Why you running round face? I'm only going to kill you." The blonde said menacingly, explosions blasting upwards to send him towards the girl.

Ochako released her quirk, wanting gravity to help her reach the ground faster, she felt her nausea kick in from using zero gravity on herself, she fought through it however, as she reached the ground and had to activate her quirk on herself again, the springs in her heels really showing their worth, sending her away from another one of Bakugou's attacks.

She could feel the heat from the boy's attacks prickle her skin from the proximity, and her motion sickness was coming after her with a vengeance, but she'd managed to survive for about thirty seconds with the blonde, which was a win in her book.

Bakugou stopped his onslaught for a second and looked up at the girl.

"You know, you've done quite well for a pebble, I bet it's because of that shitty nerd Deku, he's been taking notes on me for years." Bakugou began, "whatever Deku told you, it's useless, so why don't you just give up and die quietly."

With that he blasted himself towards the brunette.

Ochako took a deep breath, Bakugou didn't know it, but that brief exchange gave the girl enough time to come up with a skeleton of a plan, she'd just have to improvise the rest.

The Brunette jump back towards the bend in the corridor, and poised herself against the wall, waiting for her opponent to get closer.

As soon as Bakugou began attacking the girl retorted his statement.

"The only thing Deku-kun told me about you." She began, launching herself into the blonde's guard, "Is that you always start with a big right hook!"

With those words she grabbed the boy's extended arm and spun, before slamming the boy into the wall behind her.

Katsuki's eyes widened in surprise as he felt the impact run through him, and then his stomach dropped as a feeling of weightlessness rose up inside him.

Ochako landed gracefully on the floor, before running into the corridor the fight had just been taking place in, as she did she touched every piece of debris she could.

Bakugou's quirk was definitely amazing, but the boy created a lot of collateral.

"Come back here you fucking round face." Bakugou growled, trying to use his quirk to move himself under the lack of gravity, it was easier said than done, but when Ochako looked back to check how much time she had left, she realised the blonde was getting the hang of it frighteningly quick.

She'd barely reached the end of the corridor, when she heard an angry 'die' that was slowly increasing in volume, signalling that Bakugou was with no doubt getting closer to her.

"This move is all my own." The brunette said, facing her opponent and putting her finger tips together. "Ultimate move: Meteor shower, release!" She yelled, blushing with embarrassment at the fact she had actually yelled the name of the move out, Izuku was brushing off on her.

Bakugou looked up and clicked his tongue in annoyance as he began dodging the debris coming his way, Ochako was surprised at the fact he was doing so well against her attack, but she didn't manage to gather all that much debris, nor had it had the chance to fly too high.

The girl decided that her time was better spent running than watching her opponent thwart her attack, so she turned the corner and tried putting some distance between herself and the boy.

She didn't know how long she'd been fighting, but Tsuyu hadn't even told her that she had found the bomb yet, nor had All Might called the end of the match, so she just had to hold on until either of those things happened.

Ochako would have like to win, but surviving was more important right now, especially since she'd barely managed to dodge most of Bakugou's attacks.

The girl kept running until she came to a sudden halt, the blonde had found his way ahead of her, she didn't know how, maybe he'd memorised the floor plan of the building or simply predicted which corridors lead where, both of which were ridiculous to her, but he'd found her again.

"Stop running and let me kill you round face." The boy angrily intoned, heading straight for her.

Ochako released him from her quirk, causing his advance to falter, and making the blonde plummet to the ground as gravity took hold once more, the boy quickly righted himself with his explosions before coming to a skidding halt on his feet.

The boy was panting like an animal as he looked at the girl with feral eyes.

"You've given me a lot of trouble round face, but now I'm going to fucking kill you." Bakugou growled, aiming one of his grenade shaped gauntlets at her, and pinched the pin between the fingers of his other hand. "Any last words shitty round face?"

"Yeah, screw you porcupine hair." The girl said giving him dual middle fingers.

That was the wrong thing to say, in fact, she had never been so bold in her life, then again, she had never been friends with someone who liked spending a good portion of his time trash talking people who pissed him off before either.

Izuku on the internet was both hilarious and a terrible influence.

Katsuki growled at her and removed the pin from his gauntlet.

Ochako's only saving grace was the fact that there was a nearby window she could throw herself out of, and even then half of her had been burnt by the explosion whilst the other half had experienced the oh so fun occasion of crashing through glass.

The girl was just glad her costume had held up rather well, which was a testament to the quality of the work that came from U.A's support department.

The girl managed to activate her quirk on herself once more to slow her descent, her stomach rolling in protest, she turned to face the building, just to make sure Bakugou wasn't coming after her, only to see the explosion the boy had just attacked her with coming out of the other side of the building.

She was surprised All Might hadn't stopped the match right there and then, checking her ear piece to see what was up with it, only to realise she must have lost it in the fight.

The girl landed on the street beside the skyscraper they were using for the exercise, and released her quirk.

Then every part of her body started protesting at once.

Her motion sickness, finally gained enough ground, causing the girl to double over and puke, she could feel pain pin-pricking one of her arms where multiple shards of glass had stabbed into it, whilst the other rang with dull pain from where the explosion had burnt her.

To top it all off she could see Bakugou rocketing his ways over to her to finish the job, the boy was really persistent she had to give him that, it was horribly disadvantageous to her in this situation since she was well out of commission.

All she could do now is sit here and wait for her demise.

"Finally, prepare to die round face." Bakugou yelled, swinging a palm at her, ready to finish the girl off, when a black and blue blur crossed her vision and fly kicked Katsuki in the chest.

The blur transformed into Izuku in a red flash, the green haired boy staring daggers at her opponent.

"All Might called the match porcupine hair, I don't know if you've deafened yourself with that quirk of yours, but that means stop fighting." The green haired boy said, before running up to his friend and fussing over her wounds.

"You know, I called him porcupine hair too." Ochako chuckled deliriously, the adrenaline in her system slowly running out.

"Did you? Well looks like we've found a nickname for Katsuki, now let's get you to recovery girl." The boy said, effortlessly picking the girl up in a princess carry.

"Hey Deku-kun, did I win?" The girl asked weakly, drawing the similarities of her current situation to the day the two met.

"Well not so much win, as porcupine hair over there got himself disqualified, All Might did warn us about sudden high payload explosives, but at least you looked really cool during the match."

"Oh, that's good." The girl said lightly, her head feeling a bit empty.

She couldn't help but wonder if this was what shock felt like.

"Still though, you could have done some things differently, since we live so much closer now we can hang out more often, don't worry, I'll toughen you right up for the sports festival." Izuku smiled innocently.

The brunette loved hanging out with her friend, she really did, but when Izuku trained, he pushed himself and others hard, honestly, she would rather fight Bakugou a hundred times over than train with her friend, it would probably hurt less.

Ochako looked at that cute, harmless smile.

It scared her more than Bakugou ever could.


	14. Chapter 14

It was quite early the next morning that Izuku realised his day was going to be an annoying one.

He didn't particularly enjoy having a high spec camera shoved in his face before he even arrived at school, nor did he appreciate the flashing lights this early in the morning.

The reporters posted at the front entrance of U.A were an increasing issue, they'd been here yesterday, although there were a lot fewer of them and they were being more discreet, and the green haired boy had a feeling they would still be here come tomorrow.

They were obviously here for All Might, wherever the man went, the paparazzi flocked to, the fact that he was scheduled to be in one place every day at the same time must have been heaven to them.

Except they forgot the fact that the number one hero could literally move faster than they could ever hope to see, he could be in or out of the school before the photographers even got the chance to say cheese.

Or he could sneak in using his weakened form.

The man was terrible at hiding it if Izuku was honest, he'd seen the blonde walking around in his emancipated form during school hours, made sense since he couldn't spend a whole school day using his quirk, and he couldn't conceivably leave the school in between classes, but the man didn't even think about changing his clothes.

Honestly, how many people did he think wore yellow pinstripe suits?

Then again, in a school full of pro heroes, it wasn't hard to ignore the people who weren't pros.

U.A conceivably couldn't run without normal staff members, like groundskeepers, boy did the school need a lot of those, although they did try their best to fill the gaps with robots, sometimes you needed a human touch.

Then there were the non pro teachers, there were eleven classes in a year, which roughly translated to 220 students a year, for 660 students total.

No way did the school have enough pros on payroll to deal with that many students.

Besides, Izuku still couldn't peg just who his homeroom teacher was, so perhaps some students simply thought he was a lesser known retired hero.

Either way, All Might really needed to put more effort into hiding his secret, next thing you know he's telling random kids and not keeping tabs on them.

Oh wait, that was exactly what he was doing.

The fact the number one hero seemed to have completely forgotten that they had met did not annoy Izuku at all.

Definitely not one bit.

"Excuse me, could you tell me what it's like to have All Might as a teacher?"

Izuku looked at the swathe of reporters, unsure who had asked the question, or if they had all done so simultaneously like some scarily in sync swarm of camera holding fodder mobs.

"Just peachy, can you let me through? I am so not feeling getting a detention because of you guys." The green haired boy said neutrally, trying to find a gap in the bulwark of media vultures.

"Now now Deku-kun, try to be nice to the reporters." Ochako fake chided, giving her friend a teasing smile.

Izuku gave her a sidelong glance that quietly intoned the word 'seriously', before the brunette walked up to the reporters and flexed her arms.

"Let's see, my thoughts… uh, I found him very muscly." The girl said with much difficulty, finding it was actually quite hard to voice her thoughts when she was actually in front of the cameras.

"Yup, nice one." Izuku smirked, giving her a thumbs up as he decided to simply push past the reporters by force.

The brunette looked at the boy with puffed cheeks and a pout as her face tinted red from embarrassment.

She decided to follow in her friends wake, suing her smaller frame to slip through the quickly closing gap the boy had created.

"I see you're in an irritable mood today Deku-Kun." Ochako mentioned as she caught up to her friend.

"Hm? Ah, well I get this strange sensation I'm going to be forced into something today, the universe likes screwing me over like that sometimes." The green haired boy said simply, gripping the arms of his backpack and looking around suspiciously.

Something was coming, he just didn't know what.

The two students eventually made it to class, thankfully before their homeroom teacher, despite their hold up at the gate.

The unkempt man walked up to the podium at the front.

"I hope you guys have rested up from yesterday's battle trials, I took the liberty of looking at your marks and evaluations." he began, "Bakugou, kindly learn to gauge a situation, going all out against a classmate like that is unacceptable, in fact, going that far against most villains is also unacceptable, you're trying to be a hero, and thus you must follow the law, I'm of the opinion that murder is very much illegal." The man then turned his sights to the heterochromic boy of the class, "Todoroki, do remember that you need to actually cooperate with people in this business, you are not at it alone, it would do you good to keep that in mind. The two of you are immensely talented, refrain from acting like seven year olds and you'll go far." Finishing his piece, the man returned to addressing the class as a whole. "Now, let's get on with the home room notices, I'm sorry to have to spring this on you all but…" Aizawa paused for dramatic effect, Izuku suddenly realised how dramatic his home room teacher liked to be. "But we need to pick a class president."

That was enough to excite the entire class.

Izuku wasn't particularly interested, he could see why the rest of his class wanted the position, they thought it would better prepare them for leading their own hero agencies in the future, but Izuku saw it for what it really was, a time sink.

Extra hours spent dealing with mundane things, meetings, paper work, and other such things that Izuku would rather not have to do.

Right now training was more important, he wouldn't be able to lead his own agency for years anyway, no one came out of school heading their own agency, not even All Might, granted the man went to college in America, so that was probably why, but he went there to take courses on running his own agency in the first place.

No, right now all that was important to the boy was winning the sports festival, from there he could slowly build up his renown and hopefully intern with a top hero, which would eventually lead to a job offer after his tenureship at U.A.

Once he climbed in the ranks he could start his own agency.

Somewhere in his plan was maybe a way to train other quirkless hero's, but honestly that was so far away in the future that he hadn't put much thought into it, he'd need weight in the political circle for that one.

"BE QUIET!"

Izuku flinched in surprise as he looked at his bespectacled friend curb the class' enthusiasm with one yell.

Maybe he should vouch for Iida, he would definitely do his best to keep the class nice and quiet, and that would keep the responsibility off of him.

"This is a task laden with responsibility where you must carry and pull everyone else's weight! Just because you'd like to do it doesn't mean you can! It is a holy office that requires the great esteem and trust of those around you! The only truly worthy leader will emerge from a democratic choice reflecting the will of the people!"

Then again Iida was perhaps too dramatic, maybe he should help Momo instead, as much as it irked him being beaten by her even in something he didn't care about, the girl had a good head on her shoulders.

"Which is why this should be settled by a vote." Iida finished.

Somehow his class came to the consensus of using a vote, which was definitely the worst way to do it, it had been what? Two days? Izuku didn't see anyone voting for someone other than themselves.

Really the green haired boy should have known better than to tempt the universe.

After the ballot had all been collected and the results had been written out on the chalkboard, Izuku had decided that leaving his bed that morning was a mistake.

The boy stalked up to the front of the room, and looked at his five votes, totally eclipsing Momo who had come second with two votes.

He was glad that he had beaten Momo at least.

The boy turned to look at his class tiredly, barely masking his anxiety at being in front of all of them.

He supposed he could address his subjects.

"W-Well," the boy paused and cleared his throat, straighten his back to give him a boost of confidence, he found it weird that he could unabashedly face strangers who were annoying him, but couldn't fight back his nervousness in front of people he was friendly or neutral with, he needed to do a scan of his brain later for scientific reasons, "I have no clue who voted for me or why, but if you guys want me in charge that bad, I guess I can comply." He began with more confidence than before. "I'm just going to say this now though, I may look nice and harmless, but I don't take well to slackers, take that as you wish, but remember you put me up here." The boy paused for a few seconds to let it sink in, before a smile graced his face, "that being said, I'll try my best to make sure you guys have a swell time."

His classmates and the universe wanted him to lead did they?

Oh he'd lead them alright.

He'd lead them to the bone.

Sat around the lunch room table with his friends, Izuku stared wistfully at his bowl of white rice.

"What's wrong Supreme Leader Midori? Or you not enjoying your new found power?" Mina asked her green haired friend.

Izuku looked at her with soulless eyes.

"I'm just mourning the death of my sleeping schedule." The boy said to her, "and for the love of all things holy, do not start calling me that."

"Your wish is my command Supreme Leader." The girl said giving a toothy grin and saluting.

"Seriously though, I have no idea why so many people voted for me, I know I'm amazing, but I couldn't imagine anyone wanting me to actually represent them."

"Don't sell yourself short Midoriya, you've got rather sound judgement and the guts to back it, you'll make an excellent leader, which is why I voted for you." Iida stated.

"You should have used that vote on yourself man, you could have been at least been Vice President that way, considering how much you wanted a post." Izuku said, he'd decided to give his vote to Iida, the urge to not let Momo win overcoming the rationale that the girl was really well suited for the role.

"Perhaps, but as I said before, volition has nothing to do with one's suitability, you were obviously more suitable for the role."

"Well, I appreciate the sentiment I suppose, so which who out of the rest of you voted for me?" Izuku quizzed, looking at the other three teens at the table.

"Of course I did supreme leader!" Mina replied rambunctiously.

One day he was going to tease that girl so bad her skin would permanently darken a few tones and settle on a nice crimson, Izuku still needed to figure out how to even get a reaction from a girl, but one day soon he'd get his revenge.

"Of course I did man, no one else is quite as MANLY as you." Kirishima replied.

Ochako just smirked at him and gave him a thumbs up.

Evil.

The girl was capable of pure evil.

He looked his brown haired friend in the eye for a second.

"Well, as long as I'm in power, I'll probably instate some form of extra training sessions since the curriculum doesn't seem to have any form of quirk training in the near future."

The smirk instantly dies from Ochako's face.

She looked like she was about to protest, but it was quickly cut off by a ringing siren.

"_SECURITY LEVEL THREE HAS BEEN BREACHED. STUDENTS, PLEASE PROMPTLY EVACUATE._"

"What's security level 3?" Iida asked to any of the rapidly passing students who would listen as he quickly shot up from his chair.

"Someone has infiltrated the school grounds." Izuku replied calmly, grabbing his bowl of rice for the road, his friends looked at him with wonder, confused as to how he knew that. "What? It's in the handbook, we all got given one, I should be surprised you guys don't know this."

Izuku then leisurely lead his friends to the corridor in order to evacuate, only to see a writhing mess of bodies, the handbook also said to evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion, it was quite obvious he was the only one who had read the handbook in the last three years.

"As expected of the pinnacle of education, their crisis response was swift." Iida said, trying to find a way around the crowd.

"So like do we have to walk through that?" Mina asked, not exactly keen on joining this particular mosh pit.

"Well if we want to get to the evacuation point, most definitely, but on a personal note, I'd reckon I'd get less hurt taking my chances with whoever broke in." Izuku answered, grabbing a chopstick full of rice.

"I say we force our way through." Kirishima stated, activating his quirk, fully intent on bursting through the blockade.

"Um, shouldn't we try to not cause more panic?" Ochako said, trying to deter the red headed boy from bulldozing over their fellow students.

"I mean adding more chaos to the mix would be rather entertaining, can anyone see the entrance from here, I'd love to know who was stupid enough to bust down U.A's doors." The green haired boy asked, honestly the staff roster of this school was a couple dozen pro heroes and All Might for crying out loud, not to mention the more than a hundred students training to be heroes, U.A was likely one of the safest places in Japan, and the greenette was curious as to who was stupid enough to try and force their way in here.

"Isn't that just the press?" Iida said, looking from one of U.A's many windows to the main entrance of the school.

Izuku followed suit to confirm his classmates claim.

"Oh for the love of… Iida, your voice carries a significant amount more than mine, be a dear and go yell at some people so they calm the heck down." The greenette asked his taller friend. Iida nodded to his friend with determination etched on his face. "Ochako, please float him over to everyone's line of sight, someone's gonna get trampled at this rate."

Whilst his friends went to solve the issue, Izuku looked back at the situation unfolding at the school gate.

Something didn't sit right with him about it.

Namely the absolutely totalled U.A barrier, no reporter in their right mind would cause property damage to a hero school, it was the quickest way to lose their license.

Something told Izuku that the universe wasn't quite done messing with him just yet.


	15. Chapter 15

The next day had passed rather uneventfully.

Izuku had gone to class and sat through his more mundane lessons whilst trying his best to ignore the increasing feeling of dread welling within him, something still didn't sit well with him about the events that had unfolded the previous afternoon.

It was too obvious of an entrance, if a reporter really did want to infiltrate the school, it would make more sense to have left no evidence of their entrance.

Whoever had done that to the barrier gave off the impression that they wanted the school to know they'd entered, almost like a display of power, a declaration of war perhaps.

Izuku filed away his thoughts as he saw his homeroom teacher walk up to the podium, which was strange since today was All Might's turn to teach them.

Since there were two hero classes in the year, the number one hero split hits attention between the two, one day teaching 1-A and the next teaching 1-B, on Fridays he taught the one second year class.

Third years focused more on internships than hero studies with the school.

Training with the school usually involved crucial hero skills that everyone learned, the school seldom helped with a student's individual quirk during school hours, since everyone requires a different training regimen for their quirks, and pushing one's quirk to the limit tended to be quite destructive, the school sometimes planned field trips or camps where students would focus on their quirks and could just let loose, but during school time, they rarely touched upon purely strengthening quirks.

Which was why Izuku had already started the paperwork for an after school quirk training club.

It would be available to all students of course, even those in the business or general course, he couldn't hope to keep the club private since he would likely need to dip into the school's funding, the fact he was rich still a secret he would rather keep under wraps for now, but somehow he felt the club wouldn't be very popular.

Why would students outside the hero course want to train their quirks to such an extent if they could never use it outside of school grounds?

On that note, there was no way students of higher years would want to join a club lead by a freshman, which it would be with no disputes, Izuku was not about to go through all the effort of creating the club just to have it be taken away from him by someone who thought they should be entitled to it just because they were older.

Still, it would provide a good opportunity to meet with the other half of his year mates.

"Alright everyone, for today's foundational hero's studies, it was decided that you'll be supervised by a team of three, comprising of me, All Might and one special guest." The man began.

Izuku paused at his wording, it was decided?

As in the three man team was a precaution against something?

Not a good sign at all, but the green haired boy supposed that as long as All Might was around there shouldn't be too many issues with whatever they were doing today.

"Sensei, what'll we be doing?" The boy next to Izuku asked, Hanta Sero the greenette believed, his quirk had something to do with tape, it wasn't particularly amazing from what Izuku could tell, but every quirk had potential, it depended greatly on how he used it.

"Today it will be the trial of rescue, it's entirely up to you if you wear your costumes today, since they may not all be adapted to the task, since the training area is quite far away, we'll be getting there by bus, that is all for now, go get prepared, you have ten minutes."

With that everyone scrambled to get dressed in the time limit set by their teacher, and Izuku came to the conclusion that he still sucked at scarves, it was hard to get them to billow just as he wanted it to.

Luckily he managed to get it right in time and had boarded the bus in a rather prompt manner.

The greenette couldn't help but notice that the bus was actually rather awkwardly laid out, it was horribly inefficient but the boy supposed it only needed to carry twenty people at most, so he guessed they could be liberal with the interior.

"Hey Midoriya."

Izuku jumped as he realised his newly made froggy friend had piped up next to him.

"Yes Tsu?" The green haired boy asked.

"I always say what's on my mind, your quirk is really weird." The girl said.

"Ah well, that's because it's not a quirk." The boy replied, "I already explained this to a few of you, but I'll do it one last time since the whole class is gathered, then I'll answer any questions you may have, just don't ask me again after today, repeating myself is troublesome." The greenette stated, gaining the attention of his classmates. "Simply put, this watch I always wear is what gives me the ability to transform into my aliens as Ashido likes to call them, an old family friend gave it to me so I could test it for him, now please ask your question in an orderly fashion."

The class were obviously ringing with curiosity, but they seemed to keep it mutes, asking about one's powers was usually quite a personal topic, and people rarely asked others if they were not well acquainted, but the teens were all convinced they were friends of some description anyway, so singling out one of their classmates wasn't all that big a deal, they were, however, still a little respectful of said classmate's wishes to be orderly, as an attempt to apologise for putting him on the spot.

"From what you've said, if anyone managed to get their hands on the watch could they transform into these 'aliens' as you call them? Would they be as powerful as you straight away?" Momo asked from the back of the bus.

Izuku prepared his usual lie to deter anyone from trying to steal his watch, and looked at Momo with a hint of suspicion, could she possibly recreate the watch with her quirk?

The boy still wasn't particularly certain of the limitations of the raven haired girl's ability, it was best to deter her from attempting to do anything with the watch from the get go.

"Well, this particular watch is keyed to my DNA, so I really wouldn't want to be in the shoes of someone else who if they tried to use it, plus the thing doesn't actually come off, and trust me, I have tried. As for using the aliens, no, in fact they would basically be useless unless they transformed into the more humanoid aliens, it's actually surprisingly difficult to get used to the various body types, and it was something I had to practice for a long time before I could use all of them properly. Next."

"So, we've seen quite a few of them, but how many aliens do you actually have?" A blonde by the name of Kaminari Denki asked curiously.

"Well I have ten of them, but from the little I've been able to find out about the watch, there should feasibly be a way to use more than that, but I can't make heads or tails of the inner workings of the thing."

Izuku was about to ask for the next question, when he was interrupted by his teacher.

"All right settle down now, we're almost there."

"YES SIR!" The class yelled in unison.

Izuku turned to his classmates, realising that a lot of them still seemed to hold curiosity in their eyes, the green haired boy sighed, he didn't particularly want to answer a hundred questions, most of which he probably didn't know the answer to, but he supposed that if people came to him for answers, he could ask a few things in return, which would help him fill in the gaps he had about some of his classmates quirks.

"If anyone has any other questions, come find me outside of class." The greenette said finally.

The rest of the bus journey was spent in a much more controlled manner than before, and after a few more minutes, the teens arrived at the mysterious site where they would be training.

As soon as Izuku saw it, his eyes widened in surprise, laid out before him were various contained disaster areas that spanned what the boy could estimate to be a few city blocks, it was almost like a theme park.

From seeing this, the boy realised that U.A somehow managed to be richer than him, and he owned a large portion of multiple companies, but he did not in fact have the requisite funds to build multiple cityscapes, or a theme park.

It made him wonder how the school could afford so many high tech facilities, it couldn't all come from government grants, there was no way those in charge of running a country would sign off on giving anyone so much money, it could perhaps come from donations of the various alumni that had come through the halls of the school, but then most of a hero's salary was paid by the government too, the money made from merchandise and other publicity stunts notwithstanding.

"Oh my GOD! It's No.13."

Izuku stumbled from the sudden yell of excitement right by his ears, honestly he needed to start bringing ear plugs to school from the amount of times people were screaming at his poor ear drums.

He shot his brown haired friend a slightly annoyed look, before he noticed the pure elation on her face from meeting a hero, it was a face that reminded him of those he used to make before his inner hero fanboy had mellowed out, so he decided to let the vocal assault slide, if only for pure nostalgia.

"You should get his autograph later." The green haired boy told his friend, much to her barely muted excited screeching, as he idly noted his two supervisors having a hushed conversation to the side, the boy noticed the distinct lack of towering blonde and put two and two together.

All Might had used up all his time today, so he wasn't here to teach them.

A pit formed in his stomach, too many things suspicious things had been happening too close together recently, Izuku couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong, but he didn't have enough information to figure out what.

A quick transformation into grey matter would probably let him figure it out, but then he wasn't sure if it was worth figuring out, it could just be him being paranoid.

"All righty, before we begin, just one thing… or two… or three… or four." Thirteen began, "I'm certain you're all quite aware, but my quirk is called 'black hole'. No matter what material may get sucked into its vortex, I'm afraid it will turn into dust. Which as you can imagine is very good for rescue operations." The pro hero paused before looking at the class. "It is, however, a power that could also easily be used to kill people. In that way it is no different from the quirks of everyone here. Naturally in this society, quirk use if very heavily regulated, but please don't forget that one wrong step is all it takes to kill others accidentally. That being said, during Aizawa's physical apprehension test you learned the true potential of your powers, and during All Might's battle trail, you learnt the dangers of using your quirk against others. This lesson will teach you how to wield your quirks for the sake of human life!" The hero then took a bow, "that is all, you have my gratitude for listening."

The class clapped and cheered for the pro, it was quite the enlightening speech, Izuku was just glad that there were some heroes out there that seemed to care more about saving people than they did taking out villains in the flashiest way possible.

"All right, first thing's first…" Aizawa began, before he trailed off, his attention drawn towards the plaza.

IZuku looked that way too, following his teacher's gaze, he was greeted by a small blot in the scenery that was rapidly expanding into a spiralling vortex, from the dark confines of the portal came one pale hand, before another one emerged, this one severed and attached to a face with pale blue hair.

"HUDDLE TOGETHER AND DON'T MOVE!" Aizawa commanded with urgency, the class was visibly confused, and just stared at the event wide eyed as if it were another training exercise.

"Oh shit!"

Izuku on the other hand was panicking internally, he'd been wrong, he should have gone Grey Matter as soon as the gate had been totalled yesterday, as soon as his gut had told him something was going to go wrong, he should have gotten to the bottom of it.

He wasn't being paranoid enough.

The feeling of caution had been ringing in the back of his head since he had learnt that All Might was coming to U.A.

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the number one hero was weakening, one glance at stats sheet about arrests made in the last few years, one could tell that All Might was weakening, it had gone from hovering around a hundred cases to barely a few dozen a day.

Then the man basically told the world where he would and when he would be there, not only that, he made it obvious he would be surrounded by hostages at all times, surrounded by child hostages at all times.

It wasn't particularly difficult to connect the dots that villains would attack the school.

Izuku just never thought they would have the balls to do it so early in the school term, he thought they would need more time to rally the troops and plan their strategy, but maybe he had underestimated the underbelly of the world.

Izuu moved his helmet in it's compact form from around his neck to around his ears before he activated it, the white armour changing from it's compact headphone-like state to the full face mask.

"Listen to Aizawa Sensei, and remind me to teach you guys defensive formations when we survive this." Izuku said sternly, the usually laid back boy's sudden change of tone finally tipping the remainder of the class off that something was wrong.

"Thank you Midoriya." Aizawa said, pulling out a pair of yellow goggles from wishing his bandages.

It finally clicked as to who his teacher was.

"You're Eraser Head right? The underground hero who can erase quirks." Izuku asked his teacher, as they watched the villains converse casually.

"You're quite handy at scrounging for information, that's not knowledge that is easy to come by." The unkempt man said in slight amusement. "Thirteen do the evacuation procedure, and try contacting the school, they obviously have someone with a quirk that's jammed the sensors, which might make that difficult."

"Wait Sensei, you're going to fight them alone? That'll put you at a serious disadvantage based on your fighting style, at least let me help." Izuku said, getting ready to transform.

Aizawa gently grabbed the boy's wrist.

"You're strong Midoriya, I'll give you that, but there's more important things to do, I'm counting on you to protect your classmates, remember what thirteen just said, heroes aren't primarily meant to defeat evil, our main purpose is to protect what's good." The man smirked at the boy. "Keep my students safe mr class president."

With that Aizawa launched himself into the crowd of villains.

The words that had just been spoken to Izuku were ones he would carry with him for the rest of his life, still, if he's gone XLR8 he could have picked off the fodder in no time, allowing his teacher to focus on the bigger threats.

He understood that protecting others was more important, but surely ending the threat before it could hurt anyone was a viable way to do that.

The green haired boy looked at the heroic back of his teacher.

He couldn't help but feel that the man was a little odd.


	16. Chapter 16

Izuku truly had no idea how everything had gone so wrong so quickly.

Well more wrong than they had already been going anyway.

They'd been about to evacuate, the door was right there too, just a few metres and then they could send for help.

Izuku could have, no he should have gone himself, crossing the needed distance something the boy could do easily, but he felt a sense of duty to protect his classmates like his teacher had asked, and he needed to stay behind for that.

His hesitation might have cost them all their lives.

The class hadn't made it more than a few steps before the black mist that had brought the villains here had intercepted their path.

He'd revealed the villains intent to kill All Might, which Izuku had already predicted, not that it made him feel any better about the current situation, and then Katsuki and Kirishima had attacked the villain.

Like idiots.

Izuku couldn't blame them, they hadn't been here long enough to be taught proper strategy against villains of different types, nor had they had it drilled into them the best quirks for every situation.

Not everyone could excel at those areas like Izuku, before the watch he'd spent years studying this exact thing, quirk match up, villain scenarios, a hero didn't need a useful quirk to be useful, he'd realised that wasn't enough on it's own eventually, but he certainly had a leg up on his classmates in certain areas.

For example, the two should have stayed back and let thirteen use his quirk, their current opponent was intangible, physical or energy attacks would do little to hurt him, however, black hole would suck in the mist, possibly revealing their assailants true body, then would have been the optimum time to strike.

Instead, thirteen was forced to sit back and do nothing, any attempts to unleash his quirk having the potential to harm the two students.

It was for that reason that the mistman had engulfed the lot of them, leaving them only with a threat to their lives and a floaty feeling in Izuku's stomach.

What a mess that had been.

The green haired boy looked down, realising he was mid air, above a large pool of water, which was just great in his opinion, it was a good thing he'd waterproofed his costume.

Gravity soon took effect and the boy began falling.

As he hit the water, he was engulfed by green light, having managed to access the watch in just enough time, in his place now swam a mostly grey figure with a head similar to an angler fish, a long eel like tail was in the place of its legs, and it had webbed claws on its humanoid arms.

Ripjaws was not Izuku's favourite form, in fact, it would be his least favourite, apart from one other that made Izuku shiver just from thinking about, the bottom line was, Ripjaws was Izuku's greatest asset when he was underwater, the form was agile and could withstand ridiculous levels of pressure, but anywhere else and the fishlike being was pretty terrible, it dehydrated too quickly, and despite its claws and teeth being rather strong, there was no reason to use it over Wildmutt unless the green haired boy needed to go for a dip.

He was still rather thankful that he had this particular alien, however, especially as multiple underwater based villains began swarming him.

The greenette flawlessly swam away from one attack, rapidly flipping in the water and delivering a powerful tail strike to his opponent before dodgin a harpoon coming his way.

"Seriously, who uses harpoons? I'm not a whale captain Ahab." Izuku quipped, he was sure being an ass was just a coping mechanism at this point, it did help him in high stress situations.

The villains became a little more wary of the boy after seeing his mobility in the water.

Which was good, Ripjaws had a very limited moveset, apart from fish slapping people with his tail, Izuku could use his multiple rows of razor sharp teeth to rip chunks out of people, but that was very much illegal, and would very much get him in trouble.

The greenette prepared himself for the next wave of attacks when he felt something long and slimy wrap around his waist.

That was a bit gross, and for some reason hot?

Izuku chided himself on his bad thoughts as he was whisked out of the water like a fish on a line.

The boy deactivated his transformation as he landed on the deck of the boat that floated in the middle of the zone he was in.

He'd reiterate, U.A had too much money.

"Thanks for that Tsu, they were starting to coral me there." The boy said.

"Your welcome Midoriya, kero." The girl replied, walking up to the edge of the boat to check on the villains that were surfacing in the water.

"Call me Izuku, formalities seem a bit pointless in this situation." The boy said, looking over to Mineta who was curled up and bawling his eyes out. "Dude, calm down, I know things look bleak, but you're doing no one any favours by losing your cool."

"That's easy for you to say Midoriya, we can't all be badasses with hundreds of superpowers at our disposal." The boy cried.

Izuku walked up to the boy, who cowered back, as if ready to be punished for his affront, before he crouched down and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"It's not easy for me to say, did you hear what that mist guy said? They're here to kill All Might, and whether they can or not is irrelevant, because they sure as hell wouldn't have come here without the firepower to try. All Might isn't even here, so that means their sights are aimed at us, so yeah, I'm shitting bricks over here." Izuku said plainly, not helping the small boy at all, "however, these are the moments where we need to smile the most, letting the villains know we're scared is like giving them the victory before we even have the battle, besides, these guys broke into our school and threatened our friends, I'm not just going to sit here and let them run amok when I could give them a big fuck you."

"That's all well and good, Izuku-kun." Tsuyu told the boy, his little speech whilst not the most inspiring, not the worse she had ever heard. "But how are we going to get out of this pickle?"

"Well Tsu, you fantastic froggy female, we're standing on our key to victory right now." The greenette smiled maniacally, cycling though the forms on his watch, before he turned the top of his wrists to his friends on the boat, revealing a strange blob like silhouette with long arms. "What do you reckon are the odds this boat is fully functional?" Izuku asked, a wide grin on his face.

Oh how he had longed to get his hands on a piece of technology this big, but he had nowhere to put something of this size before.

Since he was in the shit anyway, he might as well have some fun.

Shota Aizawa knew when he was in a shitty situation.

This was about a seven out of ten on the shitty situation scale, quickly going up to an eight.

He could slowly feel his eyes dry up, reducing the effectiveness of his quirk, and the enemies didn't seem to be thinning out.

The villains weren't of particularly high quality, but there were a lot of them, which spoke for the amount of weight whatever organisation had planned this could pull around in the criminal underworld.

Still, he needed to beat these mooks in order to keep his students safe, this lot had good potential, he could tell, each of them could become a powerful hero if cultivated right, and they seemed to flock under the leadership of one of his students in particular.

Izuku Midoriya was a mystery to the pro hero, he didn't have a quirk, which made him trying to be a hero illogical at best, but the boy displayed a mind much sharper than most of his classmates, possessing both book smarts and battle instincts that made him suited for analysing any situation even under pressure, that paired with the versatility that his mysterious watch gave him made the boy arguably on par with low level pro heroes.

The watch was something that worried the man, technology may have advanced rapidly since the birth of quirks, but it was not at the level of altering someone's biology so completely and drastically without any perceived side effects.

But the boy was convinced it was safe, and the man doubted he could take any precaution his student hadn't already, let alone his student's parents.

Aizawa looked up to see the pale blue haired man charging at him seemingly counting softly under his breath and with his hands outstretched.

That usually indicated some form of touch activated quirk, so the man chose not to get too close to those palms without using his own quirk.

"You the top dog?" Aizawa asked, sending one of his bandages after his opponent, the man grabbed the capture toll in an impressive display of his reaction time, grabbing the same piece of bandage the pro hero pulled himself forward, landing an elbow against his opponents gut.

The man recovered quickly and looked at the pro hero.

"We keep jumping around, so it's hard to tell, but whenever you complete an action your hair falls over you eyes, the interval is getting shorter and shorter." The man said, taking hold of Aizawa's elbow. "Don't bite off more than you can chew, Eraserhead."

The pro hero gritted his teeth in pain as he felt the skin and bone in his elbow turn to dust, before more damage could be done, the black haired hero used his free hand to punch the villain away and jumped back to gain some distance.

His elbow was definitely broken.

He was getting closer and closer to the top of the shitty situation scale.

"That quirk of yours… Isn't it unsuited to fighting so many people for such a long time? Aren;t you like a fish out of water here?" The villain taunted. "Did you jump in just to give your students peace of mind? How cool! You're so cool! Oh by the way hero, I'm not the top dog."

With those words Aizawa felt a large shadow looming over him, he turned his head slightly to see a bulky beak faced creature with exposed brain matter reach for him with it's meaty hands.

Aizawa cursed under his breath as he felt himself manhandled by the black humanoid.

'This is definitely a ten…' the man thought to himself before his head was slammed down against the ground, and his arm was twisted in a way it surprisingly hadn't been before.

Trying to erase the things quirk did nothing to reduce the creature's strength, which was a scary thought in and of itself.

The creature slammed his face into the concrete once more.

No doubt it would have continued doing so until he was dead, if the hand wearing villain commanded it to.

Luckily for him, the man's attention was seemingly drawn skyward.

"Okay, what the fuck is that?" The villain asked.

Aizawa barely managed to turn and look at the object that had caught his opponent's eye, only slightly surprised by the fact that it was a flying boat.

The boat itself was almost all black apart from green lines that criss crossed it's surface like technological veins.

Two large wings with equally large jets were now mounted on its side, providing it the lift needed to stay afloat and what could only be described as an obscene amount of guns were attached to the hull.

Aizawa didn't know where it came from or who made it, which could only mean one thing, his trouble children were up to no good again, probably Midoriya, it was usually Midoriya.

"VILLAINS, SURRENDER NOW AND WE WILL NOT REARRANGE YOUR FACES." The flying boat announced as it drew closer to the plaza. "YOU HAVE ONE SECOND TO COMPLY."

Without giving the villains any time to consider or accept the offer, the guns began rapidly firing large amounts of purple putty, capturing villains left and right with brutal precision, attaching them to the floor with large globs that had a strange bubble gum like consistency.

"YOU THERE IN THE MIDDLE, RELEASE OUR SENSEI AT ONCE OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES." The ship called out again, sounding strangely cocky for a machine.

"I'll tell you what, come out of the ship and I'll give you back your Sensei." The villain said, walking up to Aizawa and putting four of his fingers against his neck, "or you stay up there and I'll let your beloved Sensei experience my quirk first hand."

The plaza was silent for a few seconds, before the response came from the ship.

"VERY WELL."

Aizawa wanted to tell his students to run, obviously Midoriya wasn't as intelligent as he gave him credit for if he fell for such a simple trap.

After a few seconds, the flying ship had landed, a ramp extending down from its deck before it seemingly deactivated, guns losing power and green veins darkening, two figures walked down to confront the villain.

"L-let our Sensei go now." Mineta stammered, his eyes puffy from crying.

The villain laughed at the display before him.

"You're the brat that was so cocky just a second ago?" The man laughed, removing his hand from Aizawa's neck. "You have an impressive quirk, but that attitude is real pathetic. Well, let me teach you a valuable lesson today kid, never trust a villain."

With those words the man sprinted towards his students, his speed faster than they could hope to react, hand ready to disintegrate one of them.

"PSYCHE."

The villains eyes widened as the ship suddenly burst to life, shooting him at almost point blank range with one of it's purple projectiles.

The goo wrapped around him, sending him careening backwards and trapping him against the floor.

"NOMU!" The man bellowed in rage, kicking his legs like a child throwing a tantrum, no doubt a sign for his brutish companion to kill his captive.

Before the black creature could slam his head against the ground one last time, however, a green laser precisely cut off the creatures hand at the wrist, before another, much larger beam hit the creature right in the chest distancing it from Aizawa completely.

Next thing the black haired pro knew, his two students were carrying him off to safety as the entire ship brought its weight to bare against the odd creature.

He'd taken it back, Izuku was a brilliant strategist.

He would have to give him a stern talking to about using his classmates as bait in said strategies, but the boy knew his stuff.

Actually, scratch that, the kid was an idiot.

Aizawa couldn't help let out a long sigh as he watched the chassis of the boat shrink on itself, and what he could only describe as a rip-off gundam emerge from what used to be a very expensive and very nice boat.


	17. Chapter 17

Izuku was having the time of his life.

Well, if he didn't consider the fact that villains had attacked his friends and that he was about to face off against the strongest of said villains.

Apart from that, his current situation was just swell.

He wasn't going to deny the fact he had maybe gone a little overboard, but he had never gotten his hands on such a big piece of technology, all the little pieces coming together as a whole, humming in a chorus that just begged the boy to make them into something more.

He'd let his inner nerd run wild.

What used to be the boat U.A probably used to simulate water based rescue missions was now an eight foot mech, crammed full of so many weapons that it probably had more firepower than the whole Mustafa police department.

The entire situation made Izuku want to screech like a fanboy, but he decided that doing so would likely not look very intimidating to his enemy.

Speaking of, the green haired boy idly noted how the hand he'd cut off had grown back in the short time it had been.

So Nomu had regeneration.

Could be worse, there were a few ways around that kind of quirk, the real question was how strong the regeneration actually was.

Izuku crossed his mechanical arms as the black creature rushed towards him, fist cocked back for a punch.

Before the powerful blow could land, however, it was stopped by a green shell like structure made of hexagons, a hardlight shield, the boy thought it would do him some good to add a version of it to his hero costume, but he couldn't figure out how to make it small enough yet.

Despite the creature's impressive strength, Izuku barely shifted backwards thanks to his technology, Izuku loved Upgrade so much.

The two opponents stopped for a moment, locked in a silent struggle as Nomu tried to force Izuku backwards with sheer strength, seemingly confused as to why the boy hadn't moved.

It was during this brief respite that Izuku caught on to something, there was no light in his opponent's eyes, no spark of intelligence, it was as if he was a puppet made to follow orders, no better than a machine made of meat.

Unfortunately, said machine had been ordered to kill the boy, and he knew enough about machines to be sure that the black creature wouldn't stop unless one of three things happened, it completed its mission, the success of which Izuku personally wasn't very fond of, it got new orders, which seemed unlikely since the one giving it orders seemed very pissed at the greenette, or it got defeated so badly it couldn't keep fighting.

This was the only viable option to ensure Izuku's survival, the boy knew as much, except he wasn't sure if he could simply put the beast out of commission by beating it in a fight, the boy simply wasn't strong enough to be sure he could do that.

That was the problem, Izuku was still weak, he was a lot stronger than he was less than a year ago, but he wasn't strong.

If he was strong he could win all his battles without having to go too far, killing was not the tool of the truly powerful, those who needed to kill to stay safe were scared of the retribution of leaving their enemies alive.

Right now Izuku was terrified.

However, he couldn't win this fight without going all out, and that unfortunately meant the boy was going to have to fight to kill.

It left a bad feeling in his stomach, well, he didn't have a stomach right now, so it was more of a mental affliction, but between his own life, and the life of a possibly non-sentient being, Izuku knew what he had to do.

The greenette cocked his own fist back, a piston forming on his forearm, before delivering a punch straight to Nomu's face, the piston then kicked in, extending the fist enough to hit the creature a second time in rapid succession.

Any normal person would have had their cranium caved in by this, but the hulking mass of muscle barely flinched, in fact there wasn't even a sign that damage had been dealt.

'Some form of defensive quirk? But isn't his quirk regeneration, is it possible that this thing has more than one quirk?' Izuku thought to himself, this only further cemented his theory that the being before him wasn't human, Izuku quickly back stepped to move out of the way of another punch, this time forgoing the use of his shield in order allow himself to grab the offending arm with his own.

In his free hand, a hilt extended out of his wrist before a long four foot blade slid into place above the extending guard of his new sword.

In one swift motion Izuku cut off his enemy's arm.

The brutality of his own action made Izuku queasy, the feeling of his upgraded steel weapon shearing through the flesh of his enemy was nauseating, even more so when his own body was wrapped around the weapon.

Even though the boy had already confirmed the creature's ability to grow back lost limbs, the fact he had just cut something's arm off was borderline traumatic.

The boy steeled his resolve once more, the creature was here to match All Might at his full power, not only match him but beat and kill him, he needed to go overboard to survive.

Izuku barely noticed the lack of blood coming from his enemy's stump before a new arm burst out from it, almost as if it had never been lost in the first place.

The boy clicked his tongue in annoyance, he needed to put the monster down, but it was just shrugging off his attacks, he needed time to think of a way to permanently damage his enemy.

Creating a jetpack on his back, the boy boosted himself backwards at his enemies next attack, leaving the thing's range by a large margin, before a compartment opened up on both his shoulders.

The boy released a barrage of missiles onto his foe, not the concussive type of missile either, no these were made to blast a hole through the hull of a tank.

He watched as his opponent was seemingly unaffected by the chain of explosions, moving through it like it had simply been peppered by pebbles.

'Right it could probably take a hit from All Might…' Izuku thought to himself in annoyance.

Using the cover of smoke the boy had just created, he took to the air to gain some distance from the creature, hitting it with laser blasts from his one circular eye every so often to keep its attention on himself.

Usually the weakness of a regeneration type was fire, if the wound was cauterised then the afflicted would be unable to heal said wound without cutting away the burnt bits, the only issue with that was that his laser beams should have in theory been cauterising the wounds he inflicted anyway, but as the creature had shown with its wrist, that had not been an issue for it. Well perhaps his lasers weren't hot enough?

The creature did display a commendable amount of durability, so it would make sense that he would need much hotter lasers for any kind of cauterisation, except increasing the heat from his lasers would require some form of focusing chassis, which wouldn't be too difficult to make with the amount of components currently at the boy's disposal, but Izuku also questioned whether the laser would be exposed to the creatures flesh for enough time to ensure that the wounds would not heal.

Well there was a much more brutish solution than tactical orbital lasers strikes he supposed.

Turning his attention to his sword, Izuku willed it to change, instead of a large metal blade, the entire thing retreated into its hilt, before taking a cylindrical shape.

In the next moment a long thing blade of superheated green plasma shot out from the hilt of the sword.

'Note to self, make one of these on a smaller scale for untransformed use.' Izuku thought to himself, before he turned to face his opponent.

His other hand morphed into a rapid fire laser rifle that he used to distract his opponent by pounding him with fifty bolts a second to the face, as he dashed towards him with his jetpack.

The boy brandished his laser sword, leaving a streak of green light as he chopped off his opponents arm again, the highly concentrated plasma burning the stump a smoky black which would hopefully prevent it from regrowing.

The creature screeched into Izuku's robot face.

The boy was not amused.

Neither was the the watch interface on his chest as it started flashing an angry red.

Which was just great in Izuku's opinion.

The greenette recalled his stretched body parts, reforming Upgrade's body into its usual form as he sat in the cockpit he had made for the off chance that he needed to operate the mech in human form.

He'd gotten carried away, because, well he didn't have an excuse besides he was focusing all his effort in finishing the fight that he got tunnel vision, at least he had the foresight to make the thing functional outside of his transformed state.

Well, functional was a stretch, without any upgrades the thing was real rickety, it had terrible armour, and couldn't provide the energy required to power any form of energy weapon, which really left Izuku high and dry when it came to offence or defense.

It was built from pieces of a boat after all, not exactly prime mech building material.

But hey, the thing could float quite well, so maybe he could do that.

Float his enemy to death.

Izuku was knocked out of his musings as a powerful fist cave his hull in.

Well that was just dandy wasn't it?

The boy slapped his enemy away with his now defunct laser gun hand, before channeling the little power he had left into his sword so he could give his opponent one last fuck you shank.

It had not achieved much more than pissing his enemy off, but at this point the boy would take what he could get.

His opponents response was to grab both of the mech's arms try to rip them out of their sockets, a task which he was succeeding at with horrifying efficiency.

Izuku took a short pause to mourn the loss of his mech, truly one of his masterpieces, before he punched the big red button on the control panel.

The back of his mech opened up, shooting out the cockpit, sending Izuku across the plaza, before the robot overheated its engine and exploded right in his enemies face.

The self destruct sequence really should have killed anything that Izuku had been fighting, but Nomu seemed to just shrug it off with ease, which was both terrifying and extremely annoying.

Recognising the fact that he should probably run, Izuku began scrambling to escape his escape pod, which was quite ironic in the greenette's opinion, not that he had much time to think about that, as he heard the angry rant of the villain who had been holding his teacher hostage earlier.

"NOMU, GET ME OUT OF THIS STUFF AND THEN KILL THAT BRAT!"

That certainly did not bode well for the boy, so he decided to crawl out of his pod faster, upon doing so he risked a look at what his enemies were doing, only to see the black creature rip through the purple goo he had made using Mineta's quirk with its claw like it was tearing through wrapping paper, which just served to annoy Izuku even more about his situation.

On that note, Izuku decided to book it the best he could, maybe he could get away enough for the watch to go off cool down so he wouldn't be splattered on the concrete by the creature's hulking fists.

Running as fast as his legs could take him, which was fast enough to almost get him out of the plaza before a shadow loomed over him.

Izuku looked back in horror, eyeing the black creature as it lifted its arm up, fist ready to come down upon him.

He was dead.

The boy knew his demise was coming, and he could do nothing about it.

His regrets flitted through his head.

He regretted not figuring out all the secrets of the watch.

He regretted not achieving his dream to support the quirkless population.

He regretted not helping to prepare his friends for the world as much as he could.

He hoped his mother and his friends wouldn't cry too much over this.

Izuku Midoriya closed his eyes, ready for it to be the last time.

"It's fine now. Why? Because I am here!"

Izuku cracked open his eyes, looking at the towering figure of the man before him.

Damn All Might, always saving him at the last second.

He was definitely going to get traumatised at this rate.


	18. Chapter 18

Izuku could cut the tension in the air with a knife.

All Might and the creature he had just been fighting stared at each other silently, as if daring the other to make the first move.

Izuku stood back, his mind telling him that the rational thing to do was to run and meet up with the rest of his classmates, but his gut told him to stay.

He couldn't help without using the watch, not against a threat of this level, but he knew that All Might had used up his time for the day, and soon he'd have to revert to his weakened state, the two were very similar in that way, after they ran out of time with their respective powers they were pretty much helpless in fights of this level, the only difference was that Izuku's time limit was much shorter than that of his teacher.

The silent standoff was broken as a vortex of black mist appeared behind the blue haired villain.

"Kurogiri, did you kill thirteen." The man asked, not sparing his partner a glance.

"I have incapacitated the pro hero, however, Shigaraki, the students here seem to be much stronger than we expected, one of them managed to escape, and I see that Nomu has even been permanently damaged, I think it is prudent to retreat whilst we have the chance."

"Are you crazy? All Might just arrived, it's not game over yet!" Shigaraki exclaimed, "we will proceed with the plan, Nomu kill him."

At the command of its master, the black creature began walking towards All Might, obviously learning some semblance of caution in the previous fight after having lost its arm.

The fact the creature could learn from its mistakes was rather terrifying to Izuku.

"All Might, that thing has insane amounts of physical damage absorption, specifically made to counter you, attacking it head on is not a good plan." Izuku told his teacher.

"Not to worry young Midoriya, an enemy like this will not best me." The blonde said, trying to reassure his student.

Izuku just narrowed his eyes at the man, he didn't need to be reassured of the current situation, he had quite literally fought toe to toe with Nomu a minute ago, he knew how to beat the thing, he just needed to let the watch cool down and he would put an end to the current situation.

He was glad All Might had saved him, elated in fact, and really wanted the blonde man to win by himself so he didn't have to force himself to kill Nomu, lack of sentience aside, killing something was not a thing Izuku wanted to do, but he was fully prepared to do it if it meant keeping himself and his friends safe.

He just didn't know how much longer All Might could force his transformation to hold, and was more concerned that the man would become a liability rather than an advantage if he wasted time trying to figure out how to beat his enemy.

"CAROLINA SMASH!"

The number one hero charged at the creature, hitting it with a cross chop that likely would have put anyone out of commission, but only sank lightly into the monster's skin.

Izuku sighed, he had literally just told the man about his opponent's resistances, but the pro hero had just gone and hit it without thinking, he couldn't help but think that maybe All Might wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, or at least a little arrogant about the abilities of his Quirk.

The man ducked back to dodge Nomu's attempt to grab him, before planting a punch in his enemies gut.

"My blows, they aren't working at all!" The man grimaced.

"I see you've noticed Nomu's shock absorption, if you're thinking of dealing any damage, it would be more effective to slowly scoop his guts out," Shigaraki said demurely, "but him letting you do that is a different story."

Izuku regarded the villain quietly, he'd seen the man in action, he was rather fast, and his quirk was definitely dangerous, but he was definitely in control of Nomu, and if he managed to take him out then the creature might just stop fighting, the only problem was that the man was not alone, that Kurogiri character was probably the most dangerous person here, the ability to seemingly teleport anything anywhere, and an intangible body was difficult to deal with, it was likely he had some form of weakness, maybe he was hiding his real body behind all that mist, but Izuku didn't think he would have the time to figure it out if he was fighting both villains at the same time.

"I had been informed as much by my student, but to think it was truly at the level where I couldn't hurt him." All Might relented, "But it's fine, if that is the case then this will still be a cinch."

The blonde hero dashed behind his enemy wrapping his arms around Nomu's waist before backdrop slamming him into the ground.

The move created an explosion of dust and debris, for which Izuku was glad he had a helmet on, otherwise his eyes would have been rendered useless for a few seconds.

So All Might intended to bury his enemy in an attempt to capture him?

It was a smart move, but whether it would work was a different question, Izuku expected the creature would just dig its way out using its strength, however, he was surprised to see a black portal allowing the creature to pop up underneath the symbol of peace and grab one of his sides with his claws and began pulling All Might into the portal in what could only be an attempt to cut the man in half.

Seeing that his enemy hadn't remained passive after all, Izuku decided he had to act or All Might would be in real trouble.

Izuku could now see a metal casing around Kurogiri's neck, most likely due to the mist around him thinning as the man used it to make his portals, that would be Izuku's target.

"Frozen in fear Deku? That's so like you." Izuku heard, the sound followed by explosions, hitting Kurogiri right in his metal casing, forcing him to the ground and pinning him there.

"Glad you could drop in Katsuki." Izuku said to his rival, rushing over to the remaining villain as he watched ice spread over the the armless half of Nomu, freezing its leg to the ground, effectively stopping the creature from dragging the symbol of peace into his demise.

Izuku saw Kirishima jump in, swiping at Shigaraki with his quirk, barely missing the villain, who managed to dodge back.

This created the perfect opportunity for Izuku to land a roundhouse into the unprepared villain, knocking him onto his back.

"Nice set up Kirishima." Izuku complemented, fist bumping his friend.

"I almost had 'im, but your welcome." The red haired boy replied.

Thanks to Todoroki's ice, All Might managed to escaped, the students and their teacher all regrouping on the opposite side of the villains.

"I heard about your plan form the other villains, Scum like you, could never kill the symbol of peace." Todoroki said simply.

Shigaraki got up and regarded his opponents in silence.

"Kids these days sure are amazing, you've beaten the levels we set up but are still basically at full HP, you even took out our escape route." The man sighed, "Nomu take out the explosive brat, we're leaving."

Nomu raised himself out of the portal, the ice restricting him shattering, taking half his body with him.

"This is bad." Izuku said, watching as the creature regenerated all the damage they had dealt, including the arm he had painstakingly managed to take from him since the once cauterised wound had been reopened by the tearing apart of its body.

The watch hadn't reset yet, so he couldn't participate much in the upcoming battle apart from supporting whoever would be fighting Shigaraki, who was arguably the easiest to beat in this situation.

"I thought his quirk was shock absorption! Everyone get back, this is getting dangerous!" All Might exclaimed, shielding his students behind him.

"I don't remember saying that was all he could do, Nomu is a super powered punching bag designed to withstand everything you've got." Shigaraki stated as the creature charged towards them.

Like his master had requested, the black creature headed straight for Katsuki to get him off of the villain he had captured, Izuku knew the boy had no hopes of dodging it, but then neither did he, he could barely react to the attack, he was thankful that All Might managed to react in time, but confused as to why the man had decided to take the hit in his rivals stead instead of blocking the attack.

The pro hero was blasted back in a shockwave of wind, crashing against the wall of a nearby building.

"Anything to save a comrade right?" Shigaraki asked the symbol of peace, "Just like when that helmeted brat fought Nomu with the intent to kill, but violence in the name of saving others is admirable? Isn't it, hero?" The villain spread his arms theatrically, before continuing his rant. "You know what, All Might? That pisses me off! Heroes and villains both thrive on violence, but we're still categorised. Symbol of Peace? In the end you're just a tool for violence, made to keep us down! Violence only breeds more violence, I'll show the world that by killing you!"

Izuku looked at the villain, he had some serious issues in the brain cell department if that was the ideal that drove him, but he did have to thank the villain for monologging, it gave the watch just the amount of time it needed to recharge, which effectively completely changed the tide of this battle.

"Hey, the asshole with the really cracked lips!" Izuku yelled, getting the attention of the villain, "you're actually telling me you put us through all this for such a flimsy reason? Of course violence breeds violence, but the villains are always the ones that use violence first, like today for example, you think I woke up and thought to myself: hey, I want to go kill some giant mindless creatures to pass the time, that sounds like so much fun?" The boy asked sarcastically, taking a step forward, approaching his enemy, hand on the watch ready to transform into the alien he had decided to use. "You come over here, try to kill me and my friends despite that having nothing to do with your objective and then blame us? Get real dude, you don't do what you do for any other reason than because you like being a dick."

Shigaraki looked at the green haired boy with a bored expression. "Nomu, kill that brat, and make sure you do it properly this time."

The beast gave a loud screech, dropping Kurogiri and charging at Izuku.

"Young Midoriya!" All Might yelled, running desperately in order to protect his student, but Nomu had the same speed as him and was already closer to the boy.

The creature had already reached Izuku, and was about to attempt to take his life again, but the greenette had already pressed down on the watch face as soon as he heard Shigaraki give the command.

Nomu's strike seemingly passed through thin air.

In Izuku's place floated a ghost like creature with grey skin that had various black lines running through its body, a single purple eye peeked out from its head and large claws adorned its fingers.

Izuku hated this form, he didn't know why, but something about it just didn't seem right, like he wasn't fully in control when he used it.

Right now, however, regardless of any kind of aversion to it, Izuku needed to use it, he'd considered all his options, and, whilst Heatblast or Diamondhead could literally end the fight against Nomu in an instant, he'd have to kill it, now that All Might, the man could feasibly knock the creature out, removing the need for today to weigh on Izuku's conscience, the man just needed Nomu to stand still, Ghostfreak could do that easily.

If the pro hero didn't in fact have the ability to defeat Nomu, Izuku could simply control the creature's body and force it far enough away from its master that it couldn't receive the necessary commands.

For that reason the ghastly form phased through Nomu's fist, floating towards the creature as fast as he could, and with one hand outstretched before its face detailed his plan to his fellow classmates.

"You guys handle the mist guy and Handy Manny over there, he likes touching kids so watch out." With those words Izuku's body slid into Nomu, and the creature froze for a second, before crumpling to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

Izuku didn't know what to make of the creature's brain, it was a mess, he could feel something that could roughly be put together into a full personality, if he had the time to assemble a one thousand piece puzzle, screaming in the background for control, but it seemed to be locked away by something.

The next thing he noticed was the completely inhumane structure of the monster's body, it wasn't human, not anymore at least, whatever had happened to this poor thing was sick and twisted, but there was nothing Izuku could do for it right now.

"Nomu? What's going on? Why are you not killing these brats?" Shigaraki asked in petulant anger.

Izuku stuck his ghostly head out of the creature.

"Yeah, I'm going to borrow your toy for a second, don't worry cracked lips, my friends will keep you company meanwhile."

Shigaraki barely managed to move out of the way as Katsuki tried to hit him with an explosion.

"Stay still so I can kill you asshole." Katsuki groused, going in for a follow up.

Kurogiri tried to help his comrade, but Kirishima tackled the metal casing that made up his real body, pinning him down.

"You're not doing anything buddy." The redhead said.

Izuku turned away from that fight just as Todoroki stepped in to help Katsuki pin down his foe.

"Students, please run, this situation is too dangerous for you." All Might implored finally joining the fray once more, the man looked absolutely ragged, his suit was ruined and he had blood down his chin, his body steaming because of his upcoming time limit.

"Sorry Sensei." The greenette told his teacher, "it's too late to back out now, if you're worried for us, come here and finish off this Nomu thing quickly."

All Might sighed as he watched his students hold his own against the villain.

Izuku could see where he was coming from, Katsuki and Todoroki had terrible team work, the blonde always bringing the fight back into melee range, preventing Todoroki from using the full output of his ice, anything that did get through was quickly disintegrated by Shigaraki, they weren't losing, but unless they suddenly learnt to work together, they wouldn't win any time soon.

"What do you want me to do?" All Might said, finally relenting.

"Nothing much, just hit this thing really really hard."

"Understood young Midoriya, this thing was built to withstand everything I got was it? Well then I'll just go BEYOND that!" The man said, cocking back his fist "Villains, you've definitely heard these words before, but let me show you the true meaning of PLUS ULTRA! DETROIT SMASH!"

As the man was speaking his piece, Izuku left the body he had inhabited and moved over to aid his friends, he paused briefly, turning around to see the enemy he had fought so hard to defeat literally launched into the atmosphere with a single punch, All Might's quirk was definitely bullshit.

Izuku made himself invisible, before appearing behind Shigaraki who had just dodged another one of Katsuki's and Todoroki's poor attempt at a combined offensive.

He placed a hand on the villain's shoulder causing the man to turn with a start.

Izuku's single purple eye stared down at his enemy.

"You put us through hell today you single colour wearing bastard, let me return the favour." The boy rasped, his free hand moving to one of the lines on his chest, before pulling it aside to reveal purple and black tentacles.

The boy himself didn't know what was behind the second skin this alien wore, but he wasn't especially keen on finding out.

Shigaraki looked at the sight in horror, a silent scream reaching his lips before he fell back onto his behind and crawling backwards.

"Kurogiri, Game Over! Get us out of here! Get us out of here now!" The man screamed in terror.

His comrade sent out a blast of black mist, catching Kirishima off guard, the boy's hardened fingers leaving deep gouges in the mist man's true body before he was teleported as high into the air as his enemy could achieve.

All Might saw this and moved to save his student, allowing Kurogiri to teleport next to his comrade and create a portal next to him.

"You won this time, but I'll be back, and then I'll kill you All Might, you and that brat!"

With that the Villain retreated into the portal and they were gone.

Izuku deactivated his transformation, he released a deep breath and looked around at the carnage wrought during the incident, it wasn't over yet though, they needed to round up all the villains and make sure all his classmates were alright, he also needed to get All Might away from the scene for some reason, the man was barely holding himself together.

As his teacher landed from the jump he had made to save Kirishima, despite the boy being unlikely to get hurt due to his quirk, Izuku walked up to him.

"Sensei, we'll go regroup with our classmates, you should go to secure that Nomu guy." He said to the man.

All Might wanted to tell his students that they had done enough for the day, but he could tell his transformation wouldn't hold much longer and that his student had just given him the perfect excuse to hide his secret.

"Yes, good idea Young Midoriya, please be careful."

With that the man was gone, whether he actually went to find Nomu or not Izuku was unsure, but he was glad he could help hide his teacher's secret.

The boy turned over to the main entrance, where most of his classmates were, and noticed that most of the teachers from the school had finally arrived at the scene.

Heroes and their penchant for being late to the action, honestly, he needed to start giving them the wrong time so they got places before the party was over.


	19. Chapter 19

The aftermath of USJ was just as if not more stressful than the event itself.

Once all the teachers had arrived and they had checked that all the students were spik and span, they had called the police, and whilst the merry men in blue were on their way to collect the villains, Izuku, as the one responsible for capturing the villains in the plaza had been made to help apprehend them properly as to hasten the police's job of bringing them all into custody.

Not all that much of an issue with the help of a bunch of pro heroes and the fact that most of the villains were out cold and all of them were heavily restrained by the giant piles of purple goop Izuku had used to capture them.

The problem lay with freeing the villains from their capture, and that alone took a good hour, by the time the villains were all in cuffs and off to the precinct, the green haired boy was about ready to drop on his back and sleep right on the concrete of the training facility.

Of course, he wasn't allowed to, not only was sleeping in such a place wholly inappropriate and not particularly comfortable, the greenette needed to give his report of the whole situation to the police, which took him quite some time since he gave it in as vivid detail as he could, and had to once again explain the abilities of his watch.

Being a police officer, the man that was interrogating him was more than a little suspicious about the watch's origins, but thankfully he didn't pry too much, well, not as far as Izuku was aware of, hopefully there wasn't an open investigation trying to figure out where such powerful technology had come from and just how it had gotten into the hands of a quirkless teenager.

Izuku did get home eventually, but then he had to console his mother who had heard about the event on the news, how it got out so fast, the green haired boy didn't know, but it was on every news station he could find, and the internet was abuzz with information about the event.

Thankfully, the task of convincing her that he was alright had gotten remarkably easier after the boy had shown her the powers he now possessed.

When he finally got into bed, he just thanked his lucky stars that school had been cancelled for the next day, it let him sleep in in a way he hadn't done for almost the last year, deciding he had earned a day off from training.

Once he finally crawled out of bed some time near lunch, the greenette decided that it was too late to start on his training routine without spending the rest of the day on it, and that personally wasn't how he envisioned his day off, sure he spent most of his time at home using his training system to master his own body, or researching the watch and the forms it provided him, and he quite enjoyed doing so, but even he couldn't bounce back from such a stressful situation so quickly.

He did realise that once he graduated, said situations would be a daily thing, and he would definitely need to get used to it, he couldn't make a dent on the current society if he needed to take a day off every time something went a little wonky, but he was hoping that by then he would understand his primary form of defending himself a little better, or have more time to work with.

Regardless, this one time he had allowed himself a little break.

Said break came in the form of hanging out with Ochako, he let her pick this time, since he always defaulted to training, not his fault, he literally spent all his free time doing it, so he was a bit out of touch with where teens usually went to hang out.

She chose going out for Mochi, which she always did, so really the girl had no right to complain about his lack of variety when it came to choosing.

He indulged her though, it wasn't everyday that you watched your favourite hero get torn to shreds right in front of you, luckily thirteen had survived or Izuku would have been stumped as to how to console the girl, regardless, she obviously needed some support, as her usually upbeat attitude was a little dampened that day.

After that he went home and took some notes on the quirks he saw the villains wield the day before, he was under no illusion that he would never see either of them again, and he needed to find a way to counter them before the day where they inevitably faced each other again knocked on his door.

He didn't fully figure it out before bed, teleportation was a real doozy to deal with, and even with his versatility, Izuku couldn't wrap his head around a way to fully nullify the ability, he had considered using XLR8 to hit the villain's physical body before he could react, but that was exactly what Katsuki had done, and it had not but the villain out of commission.

Eventually, the boy decided to go to bed, which put an end to his thankfully rather mundane day.

Unfortunately, the boy couldn't say the same for the day after.

He looked at his homeroom teacher who had come to class anyway despite being the person who had taken the most damage during the incident, and the greenette just knew something stressful was bound to happen before the day was through.

"Good morning students, for today's announcements, I need to inform you that your fight is far from over." Aizawa said casually.

Izuku noted that those were perhaps not the best words to say, the atmosphere in the room got significantly heavier, no doubt due to some small amounts of PTSD that most students had accumulated from the recent events, the only ones that didn't seem moved were those that had fought against the big three villains besides All Might, Izuku chalked it up to Katsuki being a little rattled in the brain after the whole sludge villain incident, Todoroki being usually apathetic and the son of a pro hero, and Kirishima probably being a real brave dude, although he couldn't cross off the fact the boy had seen some things, it was possible.

"As you may know, U.A's sports festival is fast approaching." The man continued, this guy and his theatrics, honestly, he hoped his class would catch on soon before he went death from their surprised yelling.

"Come on! We just had a villain attack. You sure about this?" Mineta questioned fearfully, it seemed almost getting his face disintegrated hadn't done wonders for his confidence, Izuku was slightly apologetic for using the boy as bait, but he hoped it would teach him to focus on his training rather than ogling girls, the diminutive boy needed to do as much as he could due to his physical disadvantages.

"It's necessary to demonstrate that UA's crisis management protocols are sound… fret not, compared to the past years, there'll be five time the police presence." Aizawa reassured, "Anyhow, our sports festival is the greatest opportunity you'll get. It's not an event that can be cancelled over a few villains."

"You sure about that?" Mineta asked, still seemingly concerned.

Izuku turned towards the boy and gave him his best reassuring look, which was probably another trigger for the boy's PTSD since it was the exact same face that Izuku made before he enacted his less than safe plan back at USJ.

"Well, the event is too big just to cancel Mineta, and considering this is one of our three chances to show off in front of the whole of Japan, missing even one can cause serious repercussions to our hero career before we even start."

"As Midoriya put it, a lot of pros will be watching this event, if you're hoping to become a hero, this is an event you can't miss!" Aizawa said finally ending homeroom.

Unfortunately for the teens, classes started straight after, so their excitement over the upcoming festival was left to boil for four whole periods until lunch finally rolled over.

"Man, I'm so freaking pumped for this!" Kirishima cheered. "Showing our stuff here is one big step towards going pro."

"That's true dude, I also think it's a good opportunity to talk to the class about something." Izuku said, walking up to the teacher's podium and clearing his voice for attention. "Okay gang, listen up because I'm saying this once, and if you miss it, then you're going to miss out on a great opportunity. Due to recent events, and those that you are all now aware are coming up, I'm going to start running the after school quirk training club earlier than I planned, I don't know if any of you even read the flyers I put up around school, or are thinking about joining, but I'm making all of you aware of it now, if you want to join meet me after school tomorrow, that is all, I will take questions before or after I've eaten, do not ask me stuff whilst I'm eating or I will glare at you for the whole answer, thanks for listening." With those words Izuku came down from the podium and made his way to the cafeteria.

Realistically speaking, Izuku should have told the class at the end of the day, despite his friendly advice to not ask him during his lunch, it didn't stop six separate people from coming to ask him questions in the middle of his rice.

Ochako and Mina giggled at his expense every time he huffed or rolled his eyes, so at least someone was amused by his suffering.

Suffice to say, Izuku was not a happy camper by the end of his meal.

His mood was only worsened by the mob of people blocking his way out of class.

"What's going on?" Ochako exclaimed as she looked at all the students.

"They're obviously scoping out the competition round face, we survived a villain attack, it makes sense to take a look before the sports festival." Katsuki groused. "No point though, Move aside you bunch of extras."

"Now now Porcupine hair." Izuku soothed with a grin, receiving a growl from the blonde from the nickname, "I'm sure they're just here to check up on fellow classmates, although I suggest you guys move aside, I'm a bit jumpy from the villain attack, and would really appreciate getting home without having to fight my way through the door of my classroom." The greenette added with a serene smile as he loomed over the kids with his newly muscular form, he didn't when it happened, but the boy had sprung up a few inches in the last ten months, and now he was of a respectable height, taller than Katsuki at least, which, much to his delight, definitely annoyed the blonde.

"It's true we came to take a look, but you guys sure are arrogant." A head of purple haired proclaimed as he pushed to the front of the class. "I have to admit, you guys are a little disappointing if the rest of you are like these two. Did you know there are quite a few of us stuck in the general studies course and other tracks, and depending on the results, they may consider giving us one of us a place on the hero course, at the expense of one of you of course." The boy continued. "This is the perfect chance to knock you down a peg, you guys might think you're great because you have strong quirks that are suited for fighting, but don't rule us out just yet, I suggest you don't consider this reconnaissance, this is a declaration of WAR."

Izuku physically held back his blonde rival, who was about ready to make the boy's face match his hair, not to say he didn't want to as well, but he wanted to verbally tear the boy a new one first.

"I see." The greenette said, "but Mr. Panda eyes, did you bring a gauntlet or white glove? Official documents? You want to declare war on us without any of the proper procedures? That's just unbecoming of gentlemen such as us." Izuku smirked, watching the boy as he gave the greenette a deadpan stare.

"Did you just call me panda eyes?" The boy asked numbly.

"Well I don't know your name, you forgot to give it when you came over here and just decide to declare your enmity to twenty people you've never met, but it doesn't matter, you want to come and lump your grievances over the result of the entrance exam onto us? You're probably one of those people who are not happy with their quirks, but I seem to recall beating one of those robots without using anything but my physical abilities, even then, tools were allowed, you could have passed, regardless of your quirk, it's obvious you just didn't want it as much as you seem to think." Izuku's smile never left his face, but the emotion that burnt in his emerald green eyes betrayed his calm facade, "That's fine though, if you get to the final event and we meet, I'll treat you just like an enemy" Izuku then took a step forward, causing the crowd to move away from him slightly, "now kindly step aside, it's been a long day."

"Hey Deku-kun, maybe you should go a little easier on them." Ochako advised, tapping her friend on her shoulder.

She knew that Izuku only ever lost his temper over a few things, the main one being people who were ungrateful for their quirks, and the girl thought that was totally justified, she couldn't imagine living as someone who was quirkless, growing up being bullied like her friend, despite that, she wasn't sure annoying an entire mob of people was a good plan.

Izuku sighed.

"You're lucky Ochako-chan is here, or I'd lose my cool, all things aside, we're all from the same school, and we should all be getting along." The greenette said, extending his hand out to the purple haired boy, "Izuku Midoriya, 1-A's class rep, pleasure to meet you."

The boy just scoffed, and skulked away.

"Urgh, I'm going to have to punch him into being my friend aren't I?" Izuku asked, mostly to himself, honestly, coming here and being a dickish rival type, the greenette already had one of those, he certainly didn't want another one.

Now he had someone else who was probably gunning for him, what was next? Todoroki wanting a piece of him? Knowing his luck, which had really screwed him over at every chance it had, it was probably going to happen.

He should have known having two relaxing days in a row was too much to ask for.


	20. Chapter 20

The two weeks that lead up to the festival had been exhausting.

Not only had Izuku trained himself to the bone, something he usually did anyway, but he pushed himself extra hard this time, all in the name of staying transformed for long enough to last whole events in case they were set to a time longer than his previous limit, which the greenette knew for a fact that most of them were.

He'd finally managed to increase his time to fifteen minutes, which whilst not seemingly much, was a marked improvement from the ten months it took him to get to ten, the new equipment he had made to help with training and integrating various moves from his alien forms into the muscle memory of his regular body did wonders for putting just the right strain Izuku needed for physical improvement onto his body.

With the increased faculties required to use the watch for longer also came the improvements the boy needed to finally manage to increase his body's resistance to exhaustion from constant transformations, the greenette just hoped that with his new improvements and the prolonged rest periods between some events, that he would be capable of lasting the entire festival, if not he could always duke it out with people using his bare fists and self taught combat style.

On top of all his training, he had put in extra hours to help all the people who had turned up to his training club, this involved personalised training regimens for both their quirks and specific physical activities that would help with the use of their powers, which in itself was a lengthy process just to make, let alone making sure people were following his instructions properly and then verifying whether they were having the desired effects and making any adjustments if that were not the case, Izuku longed for an alien that could be in more than one place at once, but beyond storing a large database of DNA, Izuku still couldn't figure out how the watch functioned beyond theories that it mixed a bunch of compatible quirk factors into a single cocktail of powers and then altered him at a genetic level to allow the use of these stable quirk cocktails, Izuku really wished he could find the inventor of his accessory.

Regardless of Izuku's wishes for a new alien, there weren't actually all that many people who had turned up to the club, in fact it was exclusively people from his own class and only those who he had an amicable relationship with

He could understand higher years not showing up, the club having to be opened for everyone in the school for it to even come into the principal's considerations that the club should become official, since they had prior training, and he couldn't imagine them wanting to take tips from a freshman.

Most students from support and business probably couldn't care less about hero training, it was unlikely that they had joined their chosen course for any reason other than the wish to pursue it as a career.

What Izuku really couldn't understand, however, was why the rest of his year had not shown up, general education students were more than welcome, and they could probably use some training since they didn't get special classes like the hero course, but not a single one of them had even shown their face, granted he hadn't gone out of his way to tell them it was a thing in person, but he believed it was sufficiently advertised around the school, it probably just came down to them having a misconception about Izuku's character.

He could see how he could have come off as arrogant during the small interaction he had with them in the corridor, and the boy was slowly becoming aware of the powers of the rumour mill.

His next headache was the other hero course class, truly the club also had the intention of bridging the gap between the two classes, they were all hopefully going to be heroes one day, and having a good relationship with each other couldn't hurt, the being said, 1-B seemed to have formed a strange hatred for him and his classmates over a reason as stupid as them being put in the way of mortal danger at the hands of villains, which was perhaps one of the less stupid reasons someone had hated the greenette, but Izuku still came to the conclusion that they were a weird lot.

Finally, the thing that the truly boggled the boy, the terrible attendance rate from his own class.

He'd gone out of his way to tell them in person, and some of them had even come to ask him questions about it, which he had answered to the best of his abilities despite being less than pleased at some of their timing, yet most of them still hadn't bothered to show up.

Had they not seen how good he was at using the various forms he had available to him?

Surely they could attribute that to him being good at training various powers.

Even if that were not the case, were they not even a little curious as to what the club was like?

Was he just scary or something?

He hoped not.

Either way, the boy had his hands full with the small group of people that actually did show up anyway, so the lack of attendance was a problem he would approach in the future.

For those that did show, he'd trained them to the best of his abilities, and not to toot his own horn, but they were definitely stronger now than most of their other classmates, not quite on the level of what Izuku considered the monsters of his class, namely Todoroki, Bakugou, Tokoyami under the right circumstances, and himself, but they were definitely above the rest of the class, especially in combat.

If Izuku was a betting man, he'd put a lot of money on his class occupying most of the top spots in the festival.

Speaking of the monsters in his class, Izuku looked up lazily at the candy cane coloured boy that was in the process of walking up to him.

"Midoriya," he began, "objectively speaking, us two are the strongest here," Izuku agreed with that statement loosely, without his fire Katsuki was stronger, but all out, Todoroki was in fact on par with all of Izuku's forms bar a few that hard countered him, one of said forms being Ghostfreak, phasing was just difficult to handle, not that Izuku planned to use that form unless he really had to, "but I would still say I'm probably a bit stronger than you," Izuku had to disagree there, but continued listening to his classmates in silence, "think of me as presumptuous, but to prove my strength, I will beat you." He declared demurely.

The room went silent as the class watched the growing tensions between their two strongest students.

Izuku tilted his head at the boy, before leaning back into his chair, he enjoyed declarations of war, it meant people saw him as a serious threat and were ready to go all out to beat him, it was why he wasn't annoyed at the fact he was being called out in front of all his class, making it impossible to decline the challenge, it did get on his nerves that Todoroki probably wasn't thinking of using his full strength when he made his declaration though, on that note, Izuku decided to be a bit of an ass again.

"Hmmm, well you certainly are strong Todoroki, and in the right situation, yeah you probably are stronger than me," the greenette said, before he smirked at his classmate, "but, don't take me so lightly, as you are now, underestimating all of us and holding half of your total power back, you don't stand a chance against me, in fact, you might not even place in the top three of our class right now, that basically puts you off my radar, the rest of us will no doubt be giving it our all to get to the top of this thing, and until you can say the same, you're in no place to be so bold." Izuku got up, which allowed him to surpass his classmate's height, truly he was loving his recent growth spurts, and look down at him with determination. "I'll accept your declaration of war just like all the others that people have sent my way, but know this, you better come at me with your all, because I'm going for it with everything I've got."

With those words the greenette began making his way down the tunnel, present Mic asking for the students to make their way out behind him as he did.

Izuku silently thanked the universe for impeccable timing, the coolness of his exit hopefully boosting the impact of his little speech.

After a few minutes all the classes in the first year had been announced and were standing in formation in front of the main stage, upon which stood the referee for the first year festival, the pro hero Midnight, she was a lot nicer than Izuku had first assumed, being the R-rated hero and all, he was concerned her personality would be much more difficult to deal with, but she was a good art teacher for sure, it helped that Izuku had somewhat of an artistic flare that he liked to add to his notebooks, and not counting some of her more raunchy comments, she was rather easy to get along with, although the boy had felt the eyes of a predator on his figure quite a few times whilst she was in the vicinity, she was easy on the eyes, but that was definitely illegal, his damn hormones didn't know the definition of illegal unfortunately…

The greenette did question letting her be in charge of the school's youngest students during their first appearance on national TV, however.

"Alright, now for the athlete's oath, your student representative is from class 1-A, Izuku Midoriya!"

Izuku gave a tired sigh, he saw this coming, he did get first place in the entrance exam after all, he just didn't understand why the school hadn't told him to prepare anything, maybe another hidden practice exercise about needing to suddenly address the public?

U.A really liked their ruses and hidden exercises.

"Do your best Deku-kun." Ochako said quietly to the greenette, who just gave her a small smile before he made his way to the stage, his classmates handing him quiet support as he passed.

The problem now was what to say to so many people?

Izuku cleared his throat, fighting down his anxiety as he realised the magnitude of the crowd before him, he had realised his seemingly bipolar approach to confidence, small groups were not a problem for him, however, anything he could consider a crowd just got to him for reasons he couldn't explain.

Nothing a deep breath and some good old improvisation couldn't solve.

Hopefully.

"I'll be honest, I don't have much to say here, like many of you, I always dreamed of being a hero, and to be out here today means the world to me, I hope to give you guys a good show, and that everyone participating enjoys themselves." Izuku took a pause for dramatic effect. "That being said, I'm here to take first place, the rest of you can try your best to stop me, it should be quite entertaining to watch."

The whole year suddenly shot up in an uproar.

Izuku removed the microphone from the stand, and walked closer to the edge of the stage before coughing loudly into the device he now held, bringing the crowd's focus back to him.

"Hey, it's rude to interrupt you know." Izuku said into the microphone. "I'm making a point here, we all came here to win, or I hope we all did, regardless, we are here representing our school, and more importantly we are representing all the hard work we put into getting here, whether we come from the hero course, gen ed, support or business, we all had to overcome our own challenges to be accepted into the most famous highschool in Japan, so I don't expect any of you to just roll over and give up, right now I'm representing the year, meaning right now, I'm at the top, but that could change in the blink of an eye, who knows, next year it could be any of you up here instead, that is, so long as you go for it with everything you've got, I hope you guys can show me just how much you want it, surpass your limits whilst trying to catch up to me, or is that not the very meaning of our school motto?" Izuku looked into the crowd of teenagers, hundreds of eyes staring at him with the determination to beat him.

This was the first step of his goal, he was truly awed by All Might's ability to stand above all his fellow heroes, but this was what Izuku thought society needed, a hero that could be chased after, a goal others could aspire to achieve, not a sun that people could only look up to but never touch, but more of a distant mountain peak that people couldn't help but try to conquer.

"Let's give it our best guys, you all know the phrase so don't make me say it alone. GO BEYOND!" Izuku yelled before pointing his mic at the crowd, the boy gave an internal sigh of relief as they replied in unison, that could have been embarrassing.

"PLUS ULTRA."

With that the sports festival kicked off.

**AN: I want to apologise for the long wait between chapters, truth be told this is the longest any of my fanfiction has ever gotten, and I sort of burned myself out a little writing it all in a month, so I took some time off in order to stop the quality from dropping, anyway, the sports festival starts now, and I have the whole thing planned out from this point until the summer camp arc, so hopefully my update speed should pick up for a bit.**

**Thanks for reading.**


	21. Chapter 21

The first event was a simple obstacle course around the stadium.

Well, simple in U.A terms, no doubt the school that could erect multiple cities on a whim had prepared something less than child friendly for their students.

Not that Izuku had time to consider child safety with all the kids that were jostling him back and forth in the corridor the race was meant to start from.

Truthfully, he was considering committing some less than child friendly actions himself if someone stepped on his foot or elbowed him in the ribs again.

The race hadn't even started and people were already acting like animals.

Regardless, Izuku needed to consider his options for the upcoming event.

In terms of speed, XLR8 was by far his best option, he could probably finish the race in a handful of minutes if he just dashed the whole way, but then came the problem of obstacles, the speedster was good at barren stretches of land, but as soon as you threw in a wall or a hole, problems started to crop up with running at such high speeds.

Sure he could dodge the impact, but if the wall or hole were big enough he wouldn't be able to navigate past it.

XLR8 could run, but wheels did not help much when it came to jumping or climbing.

If Izuku wanted maneuverability, then Stinkfly was his best option, he'd be slower than XLR8, but he could likely deal with whatever obstacle the school threw his way just thanks to his ability to fly.

Mind made up, Izuku shoved some kid away from him to prevent his ribs from taking anymore damage, and waited for Present Mic to announce the start of the race, hand ready to transform into his desired form.

As soon as he got the green light, Izuku hit the dial and took to the skies, just barely avoiding the sheet of ice Todoroki had covered the floor in.

It was a smart move, but even Mineta had avoided it, so Izuku was unsure, nor did he care, about its effectiveness, as he flew out of the tunnel.

He quickly caught up to the boy who was skating his way into the lead and flew besides him.

"Nice try, but as I told you, you need to stop underestimating your classmates." The greenette said, signaling with one of his antenna to the various people in his class that had avoided or escaped the ice trap and were quickly catching up to them.

Izuku quickly strafed to the left, dodging an explosion that was aimed at his person.

"Don't even think about getting ahead of me Deku." Katsuki growled, sending a few controlled explosions to catch up to the two boys in first.

"I'm already ahead of you Porcupine hair, catch me if you can." Izuku chortled, pulling away from Todoroki, and watching the boy's annoyance grow as Katsuki did the same.

Izuku bobbed and weaved away from the various attacks Katsuki launched at him even as the two chased each other in the air, both boys spinning and moving in tandem to each other in a deadly aerial dance, Katsuki was good, Izuku noted, his explosions serving to both propel him forward and try to knock the boy out of the air.

The boy turned insectoid barrel rolled away from an explosive slam that would have grounded him and lost him his lead before he turned back to his rival.

"Someone's been training." Izuku said smugly, "although for this next bit I'd suggest closing your mouth and eyes."

Before the blonde could retort, Izuku shot him point blank in the face with the disgusting goop that stinkfly could produce, covering the red eyed boy's entire face.

Katsuki panicked, grabbing his face and hitting the floor with a painful looking skid.

Izuku felt a little bad for the boy, the stuff that came out of this body truly had an unsavoury smell and texture, the greenette couldn't even begin to imagine the taste, but he wasn't about to stop and apologise.

Not right when the first obstacle was coming up ahead.

Today had come as a big shock to Shoto Todoroki.

He wasn't even one event into the festival, and already his confidence was wavering.

He was strong, he knew as much, and he'd expected to be the strongest in his year, having come first from the people that had gotten in via the recommendation exam and all, however, he found himself lacking in several aspects as soon as the first day.

He'd come third in the apprehension test, which was a bad start to a long list of defeats.

losing to Yaoyorozu he could understand, she too was a recommendation student and a lot more versatile than him, which was why he was surprised but not angry when she had beaten him in their first hero training, he respected the girl's ingenuity, keen intellect and skilled use of her quirk, as he had expected to since she had come from a rather prominent family.

There was, however, an anomaly he simply couldn't fathom nor could he have predicted.

Izuku Midoriya was a monster, quite literally at times, the boy was seemingly unbeatable, smarter, stronger, faster, he could be it all, but Shoto was sure in a straight out fight, he could beat the boy, his forms were versatile as they were powerful, but the green haired boy had never displayed any form of propensity for performing feats on his own level.

It was within his expectations to have a close race with Midoriya, he wasn't arrogant enough to believe he could outrace someone that could break the sound barrier if he so chose, but the Todoroki had expected that with obstacles in his way, the boy's performance would be hindered enough for him to catch up with his vastly superior output.

Shoto was not in second right now.

In fact, he wasn't even in third anymore, and that was a difficult pill for him to swallow.

He'd overlooked Bakugou entirely, the boy had a strong quirk, and was no doubt a monster in his own right, but the boy could never imagine the levels the blonde would reach in just two weeks.

He watched as the red eyed boy fell to the ground thanks to the ministration of his green haired rival, and despite the rather fierce impact, he simply wiped whatever that green gunk on his face happened to be, growled and then blasted himself after first place with enough power that Todoroki felt the heat even from the few meters away that he found himself.

If that wasn't enough of a surprise, the boy almost felt himself being pushed out of the way as Iida ran past him at high speed, followed but Uraraka and Asui hopping their way after the bespectacled boy, which was somewhat confusing since the brunette was not part frog and yet seemed to be jumping just as high as their amphibian class mate.

After them came Ashido, who was skating on the ground using her acid, with much more grace and speed than he himself could achieve on his ice, the girl gave the stoic boy a wide grin and a wink as she slid past.

This left him perplexed, he had at no point expected this many people to surpass him at such an early stage, but then he thought back to what Midoriya had told him in the waiting room before the events had even begun.

He wasn't in the top three, not the way he was right now, but even still he refused to use his fire, he didn't need it for this, he would never need it for anything, to win he just needed to get better with his ice, that had always been the case before and that was what he had to do right now.

Todoroki knew he was in good shape, but he couldn't see himself catching up to them just by running, he needed to use his own powers to transport himself just like all those that had passed him or he would be stuck in seventh, and that was only if no one else decided to pull something out of nowhere and leave him even further behind.

The speed at which the boy could make his ice move was much faster than he himself could run, so why not make his ice move him?

He'd done it before, in his recommendation exam, granted that was just a flat track, but it had gotten him a good place there, not first, but no one here had a quirk even remotely as powerful as his opponent back then, so why couldn't it give him first place here?

The boy paused for a split second before a wave of ice erupted behind him.

He'd beat Midoriya and show him he was stronger.

He'd come in first and show Endeavour he didn't need his fire.

He'd show them all he was the strongest.

Staring down at the eight glowing eyes of a zero pointer really made Izuku wonder.

Just how much money did U.A have?

He knew he didn't have time to consider it fully right now, but the sight of multiple, skyscraper sized, battle robots all in one place made the boy once more think about what kind of government grant U.A had, and how he could get himself one.

Izuku strafed to the left to dodge the pursuit of his very persistent rival.

"_Right, I'm in the middle of a race_," the boy thought to himself, shifting his focus back to where it was needed.

He swung his tail at his blonde haired classmate, narrowly missing his opponent as the red eyed boy performed a rather impressive looking aerial dodge, but that gave Izuku the time he needed to halt his wings and dive bomb down towards the hulking robots.

Had he taken his little fight to a higher altitude than was probably safe?

Well, not for him, he probably wouldn't get put out of business by the fall, if Katsuki hit the floor and gave himself a concussion, then Izuku had simply saved himself from one headache.

W3ell more like passed it on to someone else.

Katsuki, seeing his quarry running away, followed him without a second thought, which was exactly as Izuku had hoped, the blonde was a genius, but whenever beating the greenette was involved, the boy devolved to primal instinct and rage, perfect for fighting, not so much for noticing the hand of an executor class villain bot that was reaching for the boys like a baby wanting it's mother.

Izuku gracefully squeezed between the gap of the colossal fingers just in time.

Katsuki slammed into the metallic appendages.

The blonde growled in annoyance before using a series of explosions to push himself to the side, narrowly escaping the grasp of the rapidly closing fist, the boy spun in the air to right himself and then continued on with the race, unabated by almost being crushed.

In this time, Izuku furthered his lead to what he predicted was a level suitable enough that he would not be caught up to for the rest of the race.

The greenette zoomed right past the head of the robot, his reasoning being it was a lot harder to catch a fly that was right next to your head than one that was buzzing around a few meters away, and he really didn't want to get caught.

Whilst sound, this reasoning was the cause of him getting his various feet encased in ice as Todoroki froze over the entire robot in one go in a rather impress and somewhat scary display, and the boy just happened to be perpendicular to the side of the robots head in order to move past it in the most efficient way.

Izuku cursed his bad luck as he lost his lead, all the while using the large stinger at the end of his tail to try and free himself.

The boy wasn't stupid enough to simply let Katsuki get away from him scot free, and so he hit one of the blonde's palms with his goo, all the while still pickaxing away at his prison.

Losing one of his methods of propulsion so suddenly made the red eyed boy lose altitude momentarily, before he clapped his hands together, burning off the worst of Izuku's green mucus with an explosion and restarting his flight just before he hit the ground.

Meanwhile, the greenette realised he was falling, Todoroki having seemingly frozen the robot while it was off balance, a brutal but effective move, the boy was good, Izuku had to give him that.

Not good enough, however, as Izuku freed himself from his unwanted attachment hit the ground, and he quickly returned to the race, he'd deal with the chunks of ice stuck to his legs later if they hadn't melted off by then.

Izuku shot after Katsuki once more, hoping to make up for lost time during the second obstacle, but unfortunately it was was nothing to write home about, sure a massive hole was a problem for someone who couldn't fly, hence why Todoroki had fallen from third place in exchange for Ochako who could basically simulate flight by turning off her personal gravity, which made crossing the chasm much easier for her than it did the heterochromic, who had to resort to building ice bridges across the gaps, not that her lead had lasted long once they reached the other side, Todoroki's ice was fast, very fast.

Izuku also filed away the stray thoughts about how the hell the school had built such a big hole in so little time and without anyone noticing to the back of his mind.

As mentioned, however, the obstacle proved to be rather lacklustre for the two boys in the lead, and Izuku hadn't been able to take back first place.

The last obstacle was a whole other story, a minefield filled with simulated explosives, paint ones with a little bit of stunning concussive force mixed in to be precise, definitely something Izuku could use to regain his lead.

Katsuki had taken to flying much closer to the ground than when Izuku had been leading their little dance, and the greenette could see that the red eyed boy was straining his quirk to keep up his flight speed, Izuku knew there was a limit to Katsuki's flight, since it was created with what basically amounted to a smaller version of a rocket booster in each hand, not particularly something Izuku would suggest a person hold with no wrist support, and the blonde seemed to be approaching his limit, as impressive as going all out for as long as he had, all Izuku had to do was give the boy that little extra push and the blonde would have to run the rest of the way, giving Izuku plenty of opportunity to take the lead.

This in mind, the greenette began taking potshots at the mines directly in front of and below his opponent.

It really helped that said mines had their locations well marked out for him.

The greenette did have to give his rival one thing, his reaction time was simply monstrous, as the blonde had been able to dodge a few of the rather violent paint explosions, but eventually the boy was hit full on with a pink splatter, which knocked him out of his flight.

This allowed Izuku to take first place just meters away from the final tunnel.

Then he got hit by a mine.

He didn't step on one no, he got hit in the back with a live mine that exploded and covered his entire form in pink.

The boy turned back to see Katsuki, similarly painted pink, crouched down in front of a mound of displaced dirt, fingers brown with the evidence of his crime.

Izuku had expected him to run after him, not stop and sabotage his chances of victory, what kind of lunatic would dig up an active bomb just to make sure they won?

Todoroki was coming towards them on his ice, speed faster than either of them could run, and with his wings weighed down by paint, and Katsuki's hands shaking uncontrollably, there was no way the two were going to fly out of this one.

Without a moment of hesitation, Izuku hit Katsuki in the face with goo as revenge before skittering as fast as he could to the finish line.

He could hear the blonde swear violently and the rapidly encroaching sound of an ice wave just a few meters behind him.

He could see it though.

The light at the end of the tunnel.

The finish line.

Todoroki almost overtaking him on his ice.

Izuku jumped onto the ice wave Todoroki was riding and harshly tail slammed the boy off and against the wall.

Todoroki looked at him incredulously, as if not expecting Izuku to be so blatantly violent, he was also sure he had snuck up on the boy who hadn't turned his head to look behind him once.

That expression was wiped off his face by green goo.

"What?" Izuku questioned, "did you think you snuck up on me or something? Your ice is really loud and I have three hundred and sixty degrees of vision, ice for brains." The greenette said rather smugly.

The gloating would have continued if Izuku didn't hear a yell of Deku echo through the tunnel, he reapplied Todoroki's face mask for good measure and ran towards the exit.

"And the first one out is none other than the representative himself, Izuku Midoriya!" Present Mic yelled, signalling the end of the first event for the greenette, who had transformed back to his normal form as soon as the race was won.

"Following closely behind are Shoto Todoroki and Katsuki Bakugou, in second and third place respectively."

Izuku looked at the very pissed and somewhat green faces of his classmates who had just left the tunnel.

They had declared war on him after all, of course he was going to hit them in the face with goo, the greenette hoped they wouldn't sulk over what amounted to him spitting in their faces multiple times and come for revenge.

Who was he kidding, his ass was grass if the next event was anything remotely more violent than a race.

Izuku also noticed how pink Katsuki was, and then proceeded to look down at himself.

He hoped U.A had skimped out on the waterproof paint to pay for that hole.


	22. Chapter 22

"The top 42 from this qualifying round will move on! Onto the second event!" Midnight exclaimed, causing the various jumbotrons around the stadium to light up and begin the roulette like process of picking an event.

"Next up is…" the screen settled on two words. "THIS!"

Izuku looked at the words scavenger hunt in confusion.

He'd never seen this event before, and the greenette had watched a lot of U.A sport's festivals, meaning he'd binged all of them, even the ones that happened before he was born.

His confusion was shared by his fellow participants, especially since it didn't particularly sound like a competitive sport, much less one people would enjoy watching, the sport's festival was primarily made for entertainment after all.

Actually, now that Izuku thought about it, maybe U.A made its money from selling tickets to this event, the stadiums were always full after all, it still didn't add up completely but it was better than his running theory that the principal was screwing the economy for revenge against his human oppressors.

"The event is rather simple, sixteen items will be spread around a simulated cityscape, your task is to simply find and keep one of these items on your person by any means necessary for the full duration of the event." Midnight explained, "we'll even provide these nifty devices that will help you track the items." The pro hero explained, as little robots came out from the stadium walls and began handing students circular devices that had a map interface with multiple different coloured dots.

Izuku didn't get one for some reason, he reckoned it was just a mistake on the robots part and would covertly ask Midnight for one later as to not embarrass everyone in front of the crowd.

"Now you may notice that there are only fifteen items showing up on your map, well the reason for that is simple. Item number sixteen is right here." The woman said, holding up a golden laurel wreath, "this is the hero's crown, and of course it belongs to whoever is in first place." The pro then threw the wreath at Izuku who caught it dumbly and looked at the headpiece pensively.

"Oh I am boned." The boy thought to himself, before looking over at his fellow students, Katsuki and Todoroki were glaring at him with an intensity that bordered on murderous. Just his idea of a fun time.

"Izuku over here also doesn't have a tracker, because well, he should know the location of one of the items at all times anyway, the pressure on those at the top is building, but isn't that what plus ultra means?" Midnight smiled sadistically, "the event will last fifteen minutes, and you may only carry one item at a time, quirks are allowed, however, we will be watching, purposely trying to cause permanent damage to your fellow contestants will lead to an instant disqualification, the stage will be set up shortly. Leaving the bounds during the event with one of the items will also lead to a disqualification. You've got fifteen minutes before the event begins, do whatever, but please, do try to be on time."

Izuku started considering his options, well, there wasn't all that many to consider, everyone knew where he was going to be at all times thanks to this stupid laurel wreath he'd been given, his own lack of tracker didn't matter much, since he didn't need to look for items himself, just protect the one he had.

The only way he could think of successfully doing that for fifteen minutes was to run away for the whole duration, he could handle either Todoroki or Bakugou in a fight, he was sure of that, but the chance of him winning against both of them gunning for him whilst anyone else who wanted first place doing the same was not a number Izuku was fond of.

He could go XLR8 and run around, super speed solved a lot of issues after all, especially when it came to running away, but he was stuck in an enclosed area with a tracker slapped to his head, which made standing around waiting to run away at the first sight of danger implausible, super speed meant nothing if he got caught before he could react, Hagakure was around and she was really sneaky when naked, which was really a downside.

Izuku made a side note to help her out with that later.

He could just run for a solid fifteen minutes, but that was horribly inefficient and he could easily get trapped in a cityscape, or forced out of the area and disqualified.

Izuku needed to take a form that was maneuverable and easy to hide.

He had an idea that was super risky because he would basically consign himself to having no combat ability when two combat heavy people were coming for him, but his goal for this event wasn't necessarily to fight, just to keep his item on him for the duration.

After making his mind up, Izuku spent the rest of his fifteen minutes eavesdropping on people's plans, the area they had been moved to whilst the pro hero Cementoss basically built a whole city block from scratch was relatively small, and that made it a terrible place to scheme in.

People had formed teams, which seemed like an obvious option, and perhaps one Izuku should have considered himself, but he wasn't sure he wouldn't be backstabbed, and there were no guarantee being in a team would be helpful, what if only one item was retrieved between multiple people?

Obviously, they would have to duke it out between them to go to the next round.

Sure Izuku felt that he could probably lead a small squad and gather enough items for all of them, but running any kind of operation with two monsters on his ass was detrimental to everyone on his side at best, and he didn't want to drag people in his leadership down with his own problems.

Besides being in a large congregation of items was just painting another target on his back, and he just didn't feel like participating in siege warfare today, he already had that scheduled for next week anyway.

Was Izuku a little miffed that not a single person, not even his friends, even came up to him to ask if he wanted to team up?

No, not at all.

Stupid teenagers that he had trained himself.

Eventually, with the help of Cementoss and some of U.A's trusty helper robots the city block was finished, it wasn't all that big, nine five story buildings, couldn't make the space too big or fifteen minutes was simply not enough time for anything remotely entertaining to happen, all forty two participants were scattered around the edge waiting for the event to start.

Izuku fiddled with his watch, placing it on the correct silhouette and making sure he was ready to transform at a moment's notice.

Finally with Midnight's confirmation the event was finally set under way.

Izuku ran into the city, golden laurel resting on his ears and what he considered a solid plan ready to be placed in motion.

It was rather simple, the greenette found the closest building, picked a random floor and hit the dial on his watch.

He was quickly reduced to a height of six inches, with bulging eyes and grey skin, similarly he felt his intellect swell.

Grey Matter was a fun form to play around in, being ridiculously intelligent had its perks, but also came with the downside of making him reflect on every decision he'd made recently and then having his own mind point out how every action he took had been illogical or could have been more efficient.

Grey Matter truly brought the perfectionist out in Izuku, it was a good form to be in when Izuku wanted to make some quick cash, review an engineering blueprint or interpret research results, but he became a little more than neurotic when using this diminutive form.

Trying his best to push down his niggling doubt, Izuku grabbed the golden laurel that no longer fit on his head, and cosied himself up into the corner of the room he was in, it was strategically chosen to have multiple escape routes so he could run when he was inevitably found.

His plan was just to ride this one out since the few trackers he had glimpsed at were two dimensional, the building he was in would be found no problem, but his elevation would take some time, this building was at least ten floors and Izuku was near the top, he hoped that with everyone fighting each other over the items paired with all the previous facts he mentioned would allow him to play it quiet and only need to move around once or twice until the end of the event.

His plan was pretty good, until Katsumi found him less than a minute in.

"Deku, you managed to get ahead of me last time, but now that you actually have to fight me let's see how far you get!" The blonde growled.

Izuku cursed under his breath as his boosted intelligence got to work discovering what went wrong.

Even if Katsuki had seen him come into the building, he shouldn't have found him so quickly, which could only mean the trackers were much more advanced than he had first thought, perhaps they were equipped with a proximity sensor.

Regardless of what it was, it was complete unfair bullshit.

Obviously U.A was trying to force a fight between those that coveted first place and had made it stupidly easy to track down the laurel.

This simply meant that Izuku's plan needed to be scrapped.

He couldn't stay as Grey Matter either, he was under no illusion that he could beat Katsuki and Todoroki plus anyone else that decided to join the fight for first place all at once in any of his forms, much less as his weakest combat wise.

He'd love to use his advanced intellect to pull a victory out of his ass, but sometimes brains simply couldn't beat brawn.

Could he trick Todoroki, wherever he was at the moment, into distracting Katsuki whilst he made a clean getaway?

Probably.

But he needed to consider that both his childhood rival and his classmate didn't just have strong quirks, they were geniuses in their own right, they had the brains and brawn, and at the moment he was sorely lacking one of those components.

As Katsuki rocketed towards him for the umpteenth and definitely not the final time that day, Izuku jumped from his position, onto the blondes head and out of the open window.

It was a premade escape route that had served him well.

Landing on the concrete of the street below, perfectly fine despite the height, Izuku made a beeline for the next building over, rapidly scaled a few floors up and trapped the golden laurel unde a window before making his escape.

Yes he was giving up his item, but it was the most logical solution currently, he'd be tracked everywhere he went with it on him, and that included the short time he needed to reset the watch and use a different strategy, one that he hadn't even considered before, perhaps thanks to his now advanced intellect he could see that it was a better plan in all aspects.

Hopefully shoving the laurel in a hard to reach place would serve to piss off Katsuki a little, making him unhinged would only help in the long run.

Izuku ran into another building and deactivated his transformation and a sense of frustration washed over him immediately.

Another advantage of Grey Matter was that being so smart detached him from some emotions that he considered useless, like his frustration over the fact that U.A had made it so difficult for him for the sake of entertainment.

Izuku wanted to win, he wanted to prove himself, but the school was making it extra hard for him just because he was trying to do that.

The pressure was needed for his growth, he knew he needed these chances to become more than he already was in order to reach the highest height he could achieve, but giving everyone so many advantages whilst he was forced to survive off of less dug up some old experiences that he perhaps wasn't completely over yet.

Izuku took a deep breath and shoved his qualms deep down.

It was not the time to be moping over how unfair this festival actually was, something that really dimmed his previous love for the event.

The greenette looked down at his watch, thankful that it was ready for another transformation before he started brooding any more.

The school hadn't given him a tracker, so he couldn't find the items easily now, but he'd never considered the fact that he always had a tracker on him no matter the situation.

They'd set him up to be the prey in this event.

Well it was time for the hunted to become the hunter.


	23. Chapter 23

Neito Monoma had a plan.

Rally his classmates and show up 1-A.

He couldn't let those show boaters keep one upping him at all junctions, his pride simply would not allow it.

He knew it was a sin to be prideful, not that he was as overly religious as Shiozaki, but from the little he had paid attention to her preaching, he understood that being overly prideful was definitely a bad thing.

He just couldn't help it.

Since he was little he'd always been made fun of for his quirk, just because he needed to mooch off of other people for their power. Nothing he ever did was given the right kind of praise, people would smile to his face and then as soon as he turned his back they'd go on about how he was piggybacking off of other people's strong quirks.

He'd let most of it go, they lacked a fundamental understanding of his quirk, he might have copied someone's quirk, but it didn't necessarily mean he could use it, some powers were just duds in general, but the ones he could use still required carefully applied skills and knowledge.

Neito was just glad he was intelligent enough to acquire said skills and knowledge.

Anyway, all his life he'd never gotten any credit for anything, not from his teachers, his friends, or even his parents, they, in particular, were the worst, he'd overheard them talking about how his quirk was evil and something to do with his grandfather, but he hadn't quite got to that bit after the realisation that his own parents hated him had set in and he had run off to cry in seclusion.

He thought that making it into U.A would be different, surrounded by the best of the best that understood the hard work it took to get here, and at first it had been.

Monoma absolutely loved his class and his new friends, truly high school had been his turning point.

Then the USJ incident happened.

It rubbed him the wrong way to see a bunch of kids his age become famous on the news for being attacked by villains, what had they realistically done to deserve that fame?

Hidden behind the number one hero?

It was hugely unfair and it made the blonde furious to watch the other class think of themselves as the golden children just because their lives had been endangered once.

He'd been trying to sway his classmates to his way of thinking, and it was having minimal effect until the president of the other class had decided to set up his little quirk training club.

Who he thought he was to tell them how they should be using their powers Neito didn't know, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

He'd managed to incite and convince his fellow classmates to join in on his plan.

The first step was to have everyone make it into the second round, which had been a success, not that anyone in the hero course had failed to make it, but that didn't matter the plan could still move forward.

For the second round, which was predictably a challenge that allowed co-operation, as it tended to be every year, he had split his class of twenty into five groups and they'd set off to gather all the items in the challenge, there were only sixteen, so sacrifices would need to be made, but it was all for the good of the class, so he was sure they would understand when it came down to picking who would move on.

Neito's team consisted of himself, Shiozaki, Kendo, Pony and Shoda, mostly because he had a better handle on those four than anyone else in his class.

He was sure his plan was flawless, hell, they even had two items on them already just from the mad scramble at the start, one went to him and the other to Shiozaki, simply because she was the hardest to lead by the nose and so needed to be placated.

However, no one had ever told him that meeting Tokoyami in a place as dark as a faux underground sewer should not be added to any plan that wanted to succeed.

His attack was unrelenting and unexpected, before they knew it, the so called dark shadow was within their ranks and tearing their formation apart.

Within seconds they were all on the floor, beaten by a member of the class Neito hated so much.

"I only need one to concrete my victory, so I shall allow you to keep one of your prizes." the bird boy said with an arrogant tone of grandiosity before swiping the silver laurel from Monoma's head. "Good day." with his final words said, Tokoyami slinked back into the shadows.

God, he hated 1-A.

Momo was rather pleased with the team she had managed to rally, mostly because it helped reassure her that she was not isolated from her classmates as she often thought.

Growing up as well off as she had was a double edged sword, on the one hand she had never wanted for anything, not that she ever would have anyway with the quirk she possessed, but on the other hand her money created this invisible distance between her and those she came to meet, this paired with the danger it put her in from kidnappers and the like, Momo had made all of no friends as a child.

She had never minded it, studying had always filled that void.

Until she came to U.A that was.

Izuku Midoriya, he was a new name in the more well off echelons of society, slowly creating a monopoly over the merchandising world, from All Might to the lowest ranking hero, the greenette was slowly buying it all.

Alongside his takeovers of various materials and tech companies that had recently placed almost alien technology on their shelves, the boy was the very definition of new money.

She had no doubt he could coast through the rest of his life just on what he had already achieved.

Yet he was here, in U.A, learning to be a hero just like her, and excelling at it.

He was rich, he was definitely intelligent, and he was one hell of a hero in training.

He was so similar to Momo in all but one aspect.

Friends.

He was always surrounded by a group of people that seemed to adore him, despite being rather grumpy in Momo's opinion.

Momo would trade the world for the method he had used to gain them.

She just didn't think her classmates liked her.

She was glad to be proven wrong though.

Ochako, Tsuyu, Mina, Jirou and Tooru, all the girls in 1-A had rallied under her banner, they'd apparently bonded in the changing room between hero studies, not that Momo had been aware that she was part of the bonding, mostly she just silently listened as the rest of them talked about boys, clothes, and their bodies.

It was intriguing to listen to, but the raven haired girl was unsure of how to join in and was somewhat anxious of how her responses would be taken, but now she even had a nickname, courtesy of her pink skinned friend, Yaomomo, not the most original but she'd never had a nickname before so she took it.

Her teammates and her were doing quite well for themselves, and almost all the members had one of the silver laurels scattered around the small city.

Their formation was quite effective, with Jirou doing reconnaissance, herself and Mina acting as frontal assault and distractions, Ochako and Tsuyu using their advanced mobility to ambush and flank and Tooru sneaking in to steal the laurels in all the confusion.

She was markedly impressed by how brutally efficient some of her classmates turned out to be, namely Ochako, Tsuyu and Mina, three of the people, she noted, that spent the most time with the greenette she so often compared herself to.

She watched Ochako perform a flip off one of the buildings, flawlessly dodging an attack from one of the members of class B, Momo hadn't ever gotten their names, and they seemed less than keen on sharing, before the brunette came down with an axe kick that would have surely knocked out her opponent, if it wasn't terribly telegraphed and easily dodged, but that was only a ploy, as Tsuyu's long tongue struck out from the students blindspot, knocking him into a wall and finishing off the fight against the group of five they had encountered.

Once the battle was done, the girls swiped up the last few laurels they needed and began to leave the location to find a better place to hide out the rest of the game.

Curiosity overtook Momo, however.

"Hey, Ochako-chan, um, would you mind revealing how you got so strong?" the raven haired girl asked tentatively, hoping her question wouldn't offend the girl.

Thankfully, the ever blushing brunette just smiled at her, "hehe, no problem Yaomomo," she giggled, before bending an arm up to reveal surprisingly lithe muscle, "this is all thanks to Deku-kun's training, he's quite drill sergeant at times, but I can't argue with the results it's gotten me."

Momo fell into contemplative silence.

So it was because of Izuku, that boy truly never ceased to amaze her.

She'd even considered joining his quirk training club, but she had thought that in the two weeks she had until the sports festival it would be best for her to brush up on her knowledge, especially since her quirk was only limited by that aspect, due to this she had thought it best to practice on her own for now and join the club once she thought she was reaching her limit in terms of knowledge.

The way her friends seemed to incorporate their quirks seamlessly with their fighting styles, the new applications they had suddenly started showing off, and their overall improvements in physique had changed her mind.

This line of thinking also brought to question U.A's curriculum, sure the school heavily encouraged extra training and self study, but what they had been teaching to the students seemed rather lackluster in front of the strength training with Izuku seemed to display.

However, that was a question for another time.

Perhaps one she would go to Izuku with, that boy did always manage to amaze her.

Katsuki grit his teeth as an explosion from his palm pushed him away from an oncoming spear of ice.

The half and half bastard was strong, the blonde had to give him that, in a proper all out fight, he was sure that he'd come out ahead, but right now he was struggling to keep himself afloat.

He was holding back immensely, not something he was used to doing, but it was necessary just this once.

The reason pissed him off more than the actual act of reducing his power.

Izuku Midoriya.

That green haired little shit was just the root of all his problems ever since they were kids, but the red eyed boy had to begrudgingly admit that he was also the only person who could piss him off so effectively.

Both him and the heterochromic turd bag he was fighting knew that getting that particular classmate involved in this fight was nothing but detrimental to the both of them, they were fairly certain they wouldn't lose to him, but if all three of them got involved in a free-for-all, they were unsure if the crafty freckled fiend wouldn't pull one on them like he seemed to love doing at every occasion.

Because of this, the two were trying to keep their battle for the golden laurel as discreet as possible, not something that was easy for either of them since they had the flashiest quirks in the year, but it was a small price to pay not to get Izuku involved in their fight for first place.

Katsuki back flipped to right himself before charging towards his opponent.

He'd lost the laurel, much to his frustration, when the boy in front of him had ambushed him with an entire glacier, he hadn't been able to put the laurel on his head for safe keeping since Deku had placed it in the most awkward place, and Katsuki had needed to climb a drain pipe to get it down, he really needed to learn controlled hovering at some point.

Since then, he'd been chasing Icy Hot across the small cityscape, and had finally managed to corner his opponent in a place that would lead to disqualification if he ran further, the roof of one of the corner buildings, and now they were battling it out as quietly as explosions and massive ice pillars would allow.

They were just thankful that they couldn't be seen from anywhere other than the adjacent rooftops, and if anyone got up there, the two boys could see them first and act accordingly.

Katsuki reached out to grab the laurel in his opponent's left hand, but the boy swiftly dodged and sent a wave of ice his way, Katsuki used a well placed explosion to move out of the way and redirect himself to deliver an axe kick.

Icy Hot dodged it, but fell into the perfect position for the blondes palm strike to hit him square in the chest, a small explosion adding some extra force to the attack.

The heterochromic boy used some ice to build a cushion behind him, stopping himself from falling off the edge and being disqualified, but making him a sitting duck for Katsuki's next attack.

The blonde spun around, snatching the laurel from his opponent's hand and kicking him in the chest to push himself away to a safe distance.

Icy Hot growled and jumped after him, riding a wave of ice to chase after him.

Katsuki dodged the horribly choreographed attack, only to be caught by surprise when his opponent full on body tackled him to the ground, pinning his free arm down to stop him from using his quirk whilst the laurel was in his hand.

The blonde released a frustrated rumble, before throwing the laurel into the air so he could strike Icy Hot with enough concussive force to stun a horse.

Once his opponent was off him, he go back up to grab his prize only to see the image of a rather large, orange dog creature grab it in its mouth like it was a fucking frisbee.

"DEKU!" The blonde roared, before falling into a coughing fit as his throat started to sting sharply.

He'd screamed too much today, and his wound was resurfacing.

The greenette in his Wildmutt form turned to face his rival with his eyeless head and released an amused snort, before turning and jumping over to another rooftop.

Katsuki searched around furiously for the spare silver laurel he'd grabbed right at the start of the game, finding it teetering precariously near the edge of the roof, the blonde wasn't stupid, he's recently been awakened to things being outside his control, so he'd taken extra care to prepare a backup in case someone stole the golden laurel from him.

Once the new laurel was safely on his ears, the boy turned to find his childhood acquaintance, only to hear Midnight call the end of the round.

"Fuck." The blonde whispered to himself. "Fuck" a little loude this time. "FUCK" this one a scream.

"DEKUUUU!" Katsuki roared, before clutching his throat in pain.

The blonde took stock of his situation, he was in the finals, and no way could anyone beat him or Deku.

He'd have his chance to beat Deku to a pulp, and no amount of guile would get that broccoli headed nerd out of it this time.

He was going to enjoy making that bastard die.


	24. Chapter 24

Izuku had somehow done it, he'd managed to snatch first place back at the last moment, which, even for him was too clutch for comfort.

His brilliant plan had involved finding Katsuki and then staying hidden close to it, just waiting for the best time to jump out and grab back the golden laurel, this had lead him to being stuck to the side of a building for a good couple of minutes and letting his two biggest opponents duke it out until the item was unattended.

Thankfully it had come just before the end of the game, which had been way too close for comfort, but he'd gotten it in the end, so that's all that really mattered.

That's how he got himself over the fact that a certain blonde probably wanted him double dead now.

As to why he hadn't joined in on the fight, as epic as it probably would have been, the greenette had deduced that an ambush would be a lot cleaner and easier on his body, which had in fact been the case.

It wasn't like he was a couple more seconds away from abandoning all semblance of strategy and descending upon his classmates as a howling fur ball of pure canine fury just to ensure a laurel in front of the entire country or anything.

The world would never know how desperate he had been getting as the clock ticked down to the last seconds.

Unless there were mid readers amongst the crowd, then they would have to be eliminated.

Random thoughts of ruthlessly hunting down would be tattletales aside, Izuku now stood in front of Midnight's stage waiting for her to announce the sixteen winners of this round, not that he couldn't tell just based on who was currently slated or smug, and who was downtrodden, and one blonde that was apparently cursing his 18 generations or something?

"Now then, let's see which one of you lovely virile youths made it through." The pro hero said with a drawl, before licking her lips, the action sent chills down Izuku's spine, but also made his heart speed up a little. The woman was scary, but strangely attractive. This particular pro had always been rather confusing to Izuku's emotions "After snapping victory from the jaws of defeat, with his own jaws might I add, first place once more goes to our very own student representative, Izuku Midoriya!"

The crowd cheered at this declaration, Izuku hadn't done a lot in the last round, which made him a little confused about why the crowd was cheering for him, the festival basically amounting to gladiatorial combat for most viewers and all, but he supposed some people would be rooting for him after his performance in the race, the prestige of continuously being first probably amounted to something as well.

"Following closely behind him, after an impressive display of combat, we have the second and third places from last round, Katsuki Bakugou and Shoto Todoroki."

The crowd cheered again, it was about the same volume as when they had cheered for him, so Izuku supposed maybe they were just cheering for the sake of cheering, he never could quite analyse large crowds correctly. "alongside them are other students from our frontrunners at class 1-A, Tenya Iida, Fumikage Tokoyami, Tooru Hagakure, Momo Yaoyorozu, Ochako Uraraka, Kyoka Jiro, Eijiro Kirishima, Mina Ashido, and Tsui Asui." Midnight continued, "Finally getting some of the limelight, class 1-B's Ibara Shiozaki, Yui Kodai, and Tetsutetsu Tetsutesu. And Last,but certainly not least, the absolute wild card of this event, from the general studies course, we have Shinso Hitosh! These sixteen will proceed to the final event!"

Izuku gave a sidelong glance at the purple haired boy that had made such bold declarations to him previously.

It was quite impressive that he had made this far, which lead the greenette to believe that his quirk was actually something rather useful, but was in fact unsuitable for battling the robots of the entrance exam, which really begged the question as to why he seemed to be so glum about his own power.

"Alright kiddies, come on up here and grab a ball from the ballot box." Midnight said cheerfully.

The winning students went up one by one, collecting a ball and displaying it to the crowd.

Izuku got the ball labelled one, which meant he was going to have to go first, he just hoped he didn't get one of the heavy hitters right off the bat, or he was going to be exhausted for the remaining matches if he even managed to win.

Battle was a fickle thing after all.

As it turned out, Izuku had been worried for nothing, as his first battle would be against the very same boy he had been analysing earlier, he meant no offence but it was clear that Hitoshi was not trained in any form of combat, and Izuku could infer that his quirk lacked offensive powers.

The greenette wasn't about to get arrogant, however, as it was obvious the boy had some tricks up his sleeve, having gotten this far into the competition, but somehow Izuku felt that his first match was going to be a lot more preaching than it was going to be fighting.

Izuku then took a look at the other matches.

Two class 1-B students would be fighting in the second match, Shiozaki and Kodai, Izuku had never interacted with either, so it would be a good opportunity to learn about their quirks before he inevitably fought one of them.

Then it was Todoroki against Hagakure, which surprisingly could go either way, sure the dual quirk wielder was strong, but he wasn't adept at tracking at all, if the invisible girl could sneak up on him and incapacitate him, she could actually win the match, but that was all up to whether Todoroki held back at all, which Izuku very much doubted that he would.

Next was Tenya and Yaoyoruzu, which would likely be a rather interesting match, it'd be the first match involving someone from Izuku's quirk training club, and the raven haired girl was no push over herself.

The match after brought a mix of cold sweat and excitement to the greenette.

Ochako vs Katsuki.

Many would think that it would be a bloodbath, but not many knew that Izuku had been helping his brunette friend with her training since the entrance exam, and ever since the first Hero studies lesson, he'd upped the ante and started to really push the girl hard.

Ochako took to the training like a fish to water, the fighting style Izuku had taught her was up to a rather passable level in only a week, which was actually rather scary, plus all the time they had spent synergising her quirk and her battle prowess into one deadly, physics defying weapon, suffice to say Ochako was a little bit of a monster herself.

Against anyone else, apart from perhaps Todoroki, it would easily have been the ever blushing girl's victory, but Bakugou was on Izuku's level, a level which the girl was infinitesimally close to, but unfortunately fell just a little short of.

Simply put, Izuku would be on the edge of his seat the entire time.

Fumikage was fighting in the next one against Jirou, which perhaps wouldn't demonstrate the skills he'd learnt at the club, as unlikely as Izuku had thought it that he'd turn up, he was the only one out of the greenette's usual main friend group that had.

Then it was Eijiro against Tetsutetsu, which from what Izuku understood was basically two identical abilities duking it out until one of their defenses gave out, cumbersome to watch for sure, but it was where Eijiro excelled, so the greenette was curious as to who's quirk was stronger.

Finally, Mina and Tsu would close off the first round, both of them had trained with Izuku, and the greenette was very much aware about both of their abilities, so he was sure it would shape up to be a rather interesting match.

After all the fights had been announced, the festival was put on break for lunch, and so Izuku was rounded up by his friends and they went to find food whilst chattering excitedly amongst themselves.

The greenette could feel some anxiety running through all of them, since they had all made it to the next round, he had the same niggling voice deep down in his gut as well, so he was glad for the distraction caused by their small talk, as he was sure they all were too.

The meal was quick and uninterrupted, unlike their journey back to the stadium, half way through the girls split off from the group for some unknown reason, he'd seen them talking to Kaminari and Mineta with the other three girls in class at one point in the lunch queue, so it was probably to do with that, Izuku felt mischief afoot, but before he could stop it or partake in it, depending on how much trouble it would get him into, the greenette was stopped by one of his classmates.

"Midoriya, we need to talk."

Izuku looked at Ojiro curiously, he'd never really held a conversation with the tailed boy, but he seemed like a decent person from what little the greenette had heard about him, so he had no quarry with him, Izuku was also aware that the blonde was a rather adept fighter, and he would have loved to trade some pointers with him in the finals.

The seriousness in the boy's voice and expression made it clear that this was a conversation that needed to happen in private, so Izuku asked his two remaining friends to go on ahead and save him a seat.

"What's up Ojiro?" The greenette queried curiously.

"It's about your first match, your opponent, Shinso that purple haired kid, whatever you do don't answer any of his questions." The boy explained.

"Is that the condition to activate his quirk? What happens if I answer?"

"I don't know, but I wouldn't risk it, back in the last event, one second I was running around, laurel in hand, and the next I answered one of his questions, something stupid about how long we had left, and just like that it was like I was no longer there, trapped in my own body so to speak…" Ojiro began, "I knew what was happening, but I couldn't do anything about it, I only snapped out of it when someone bumped into me, but that won't happen in a one-on-one situation." The boy gave a sigh as if to calm his nerves. "Just be careful not to fall into any of his traps, okay? You're a good guy Midoriya, and I don't wish what happened to me on anyone who doesn't deserve it. I also wouldn't mind it if you socked him one for me."

With those words the boy left with a shaky smile.

Izuku gave him a few moments so that he wouldn't catch up to him on his way out, the blonde seemed to be rather frustrated, maybe a little traumatised and based on how quickly he'd passed on the information he just had, being alone was perhaps the best way for him to sort out his thoughts.

Having never been on the tail end of a similar quirk, Izuku couldn't fully comprehend his situation, he was empathetic to it all the same, but right now he couldn't help him, and he had more pressing matters to attend to.

His opponent seemed to have some form of immobilization or control quirk, not something that Izuku needed to transform for, but rather he needed to reign in his habit of answering questions, it was a natural human response, especially if his opponent employed some form of dirty tactic which played on Izuku's lesser controlled, hormone fuelled emotions.

Speaking of hormone fuelled emotions, Izuku stopped dead in his tracks as he watched the six girls in his class prancing around in revealing cheerleading outfits.

He didn't know whose idea it had been, nor how they had convinced them to do that, but the greenette was torn between calling them a genius, pure evil, or just plain perverted.

Scratch that he knew exactly whose fault it was.

The boy also realised how pretty all the girls in his class were, but that was filed away for later appraisal, alongside the hypnotic bounce of certain body parts.

He didn't have the time to think of this stuff right now, he needed to kick some ass and hopefully not get murdered by his childhood bully, fighting down his rising urge for a girlfriend was not going to help him in these tasks.

He wasn't even sure how he would go about pursuing a girl anyway.

Rather than that, the boy knew he should be planning for his first match using a skill he actually possessed, analysing quirks and people and countering the hell out of them, most of the time successfully.

The boy could also sense the fact that Shinso was going to need a rather stern, heartfelt speech of some form, well more like Izuku wanted to rant the boy's ears off for complaining about having a 'weak' quirk, the greenette didn't even understand it fully, but he could already see it being implemented in hundreds of life saving ways.

Izuku really didn't want to embarrass himself in front of all these people and national television, so he had half a mind to plan what he was going to yell at the top of his lungs beforehand, he deeply considered writing it down on his arm.

Except he also really wanted to watch the girls dance around some more.

Puberty was a confusing time.

Izuku managed to peel himself away from the enticing scene in front of him to go look for his notebook, taking some notes was sure to clear his mind so that he'd be fully ready for his fights.

On his way the boy idly wondered if hair would be the only purple thing about his opponent by the end of the first round.


	25. Chapter 25

**AN: I released two chapters at once today, this is the second one, so go back to read chapter 24 if you haven't already.**

"HEY GUYS, ARE YOU READY? YOU'VE BEEN THROUGH HELL TO GET HERE, BUT NOW IT'S TIME FOR THE ONE-ON-ONE TOURNAMENT!"

Izuku limbered up his body as he absentmindedly listened to Present Mic announce the event, he was busy psyching himself up and muttering the skeleton of his lecture to himself, which made him kind of glad that he was alone in the entrance tunnel, it was really difficult to support an internal monologue when people were looking at you as if you were possessed by Satan.

Izuku couldn't help wonder how his opponent was faring since Shinso had seemed oddly calm from the few times the greenette had glanced his way during the break, which was impressive to the boy since this was the case despite knowing he was going up against the current first place, which made Izuku wonder if he could get the boy to tutor him in hiding his anxiety after he used talk-no-jutsu to filter the antagonising out of the purple haired boy's attitude.

The greenette reckoned his opponent's lack of visible concern was mostly thanks to the quirk he possessed, Izuku didn't really want to break it to the boy that even if he did win this first match, once his ability was seen through he would lose rather quickly to his next opponent, and if he didn't, well Todoroki would definitely silently wipe the floor with him, the boy wasn't much of a talker.

Izuku walked out into the afternoon light as Mic continued to commentate the match.

"The first match! Performing excellently throughout the event, from the Hero Course, IT'S IZUKU MIDORIYA! Versus the one no one expected to reach this far, from General Studies, HITOSHI SHINSO!"

Izuku looked towards his opponent, noting how the boy still carried himself in a rather relaxed manner, if he had any idea about the speech Izuku had half prepared for this occasion, perhaps there would have been a slight hesitation in his stride.

If only for the sake of his ears.

God, Izuku's friends had really rubbed off on him.

"The rules are simple! You win by knocking your opponent out of the ring, immobilising them or getting them to say 'I give up'! Good old recovery girl is on standby so don't be afraid to bring the pain, but don't go for the kill or you'll be disqualified, true hero's fists only fly when in the pursuit of villains!"

"Yo, nice to see you up here, it seems like that declaration of war from a few weeks back wasn't wasted." Izuku bantered, whilst bending down to casually tie his shoelaces.

"Oh I'm sure it's rather surprising for someone like you to see me getting this far, what with how strong your quirk is, I doubt you even had to try to get this far, tell me, what is it like to be born so blessed?" Shinso mocked.

Izuku gave a thin smile as he stood up, emerald eyes bore into his opponent with the determination of forcing his own beliefs onto someone else in order to make them more receptive of your point of view.

Yes, Izuku knew preaching in the middle of a battle was horribly self entitled and down right stupid, but he'd already used a page of his notebook to help him sound cool back before he realised that pretending he was a shounen protagonist on national television was really embarrassing, and dammit if he was going to let that page go to waste.

As Izuku heard Mic announce the start of the match, he summoned all the glib edginess he could muster and replied:

"I would tell you, but I'm not sure you'd hear me with your head so far up your own ass."

That part had not been in the notes.

The greenette realised that he probably needed treatment for his addiction to random bouts of sass, and that sticking to the script was probably a better idea than antagonising his opponent.

He also noticed that the world was kind of fuzzy right now.

Okay, he understood now why Ojiro was a little frazzled by his experience.

"Well wasn't that enlightening?" Shinso said sarcastically. "Be a good boy and walk off the stage for me."

Izuku turned to do just that, much to the surprise of the crowd watching.

The greenette heard some muffled commentary about how illogical the entrance exam had been when it came to assessing quirks, which he agreed with, Shinso's ability was downright terrifying to anyone who wasn't aware of it, and Izuku was sure that with the right support gear and some physical training the purple haired boy would probably be a bitch to fight.

Izuku went to take his first step, and promptly fell on his face.

"Note to self, brainwashed people haven't got the sense to cushion their falls." Izuku muttered while rubbing his nose.

The greenette stood back up and promptly slipped off his favourite red sneakers, revealing them to be tied together.

There were a few beats of silence as everyone looked on in confusion and Izuku beamed at his own brilliance.

"You knew what my quirk was?" Shinso gaped, "why did you let yourself get caught by it then?"

Izuku looked at his opponent with an expression of absolute smugness on his face before accurately smacking him in the nose with a throw of his bright red footwear.

"I was testing how deeply your control goes, but seeing as I didn't untie my shoes in order to follow your command it seems it's only minimal," The greenette said, pausing for a tick to verify that he was in fact still in control of his body, "and it seems like breaking your focus also prevents it from activating."

Izuku thought it very important to test the limits of his opponents quirk, not that he thought Ojiro would lie to him, but the boy had just been under the effects of a brainwashing quirk, so the information he had given the greenette could have been something he was controlled into saying, he could have just not let the quirk activate, but being naturally curious about quirks, Izuku couldn't let the opportunity of testing this particular quirk in a combat situation.

Knowing your enemies capabilities was very important after all.

Satisfied with the results of his experiment, Izuku charged his foe and hit him with a good old shoulder barge, knocking him flat on his ass.

"Don't get caught dead on your feet now, the fight's just started." Izuku chuckled, now that he had a few things for the notebook, it was time to break out the script.

"So let me see, you keep complaining about how my quirk is better than yours, and I'm lucky that I can become a hero so easily or whatever." Izuku stated, following closely as Shinso scrambled back to his feet and put up a sloppy fighting stance.

Izuku threw a punch at his opponent's guard, forcing him a few steps back and causing the boy to wince in pain.

"See, I hate to break this to you, but right now I can and am kicking your ass without the help of a quirk or anything else, because there's something fundamental you don't understand." Izuku kicked the boy in his side. "The quirk you were born with doesn't define how strong you can get, no one is born strong, no one is born a hero, and no one is born a villain for that matter." The greenette shifted slightly to dodge a desperate punch to his face, before punching his opponent in the stomach to stop him from spitting out whatever he was about to say.

"No talking, we've established that I know how your quirk works, it's absolutely amazing by the way, not sure why you complain at all, some people out there would kill for a quirk just like it, anyway, as I was saying, a hero isn't simply born, they're made from how someone ordinary chooses to use what makes them extraordinary, those who choose to take whatever they're born with, no matter how shitty that may be, and use it to help others, to do good."

Izuku sweeped his opponent's legs from under him, sending the boy to the floor once more.

"It doesn't matter what your quirk is, it doesn't matter who you are, even if you're born with nothing, as long as you push yourself as far as needed to achieve what you want you can do it, or do you think I was born strong enough to beat you with nothing but my fists?" Izuku said, taking a few steps back and waiting for Shinso to get back up so he could continue beating him to a pulp.

"That's so easy for you to say!" The purpled haired boy growled, shakily standing up. "I've heard about the stuff you can do, you probably have the strongest quirk in the whole school maybe in the whole of Japan, what right do you have to lecture me about working your way up?" Shinso spat angrily.

Izuku smiled at him wryly.

Then he punched him in the nose.

"I wasn't always this strong you dunce," Izuku judo flipped the boy over his shoulder to make his point, before crouching down so his opponent could hear him better "sure I have a lot of power now, but it wasn't easy to get a hold of it, let alone a handle on it, so I put myself through hell in order to get where I am. Everyone dreams of coming to this school at some point, but no one quite seems to understand the meaning of its motto. Going Beyond isn't about just coasting through life on whatever you were born with or are naturally good at, it's about pushing past that, reaching heights no one ever believed you could, breaking your limits just so you can wrap a hand around your dreams."

Izuku grabbed his opponent by the shirt and hoisted him up.

"I hope you get what I'm trying to say," Izuku said solemnly, "I hope you understand the true meaning of Plus Ultra!" The greenette yelled finally, throwing his opponent with all his might, and landing him off the stage.

"Shinso is out of the ring! Midoriya moves on to the second round!" Midnight announced excitedly.

Amidst the cheers of the crowd, Izuku approached his opponent and offered him a hand to stand up, Shinso knocked it out of the way with a frustrated growl.

The greenette just sighed, that was a page in his notebook he'd never get back.

Oh well, at least he probably looked really cool for the camera.

"I really didn't get through to you did I?" Izuku inquires, "fine, if you won't take it from me, listen to everyone who was watching." The boy motioned you the crowd, where various people were in different states of praising both boys.

Shinso stood up and listened silently to the clamour of the crowd.

As the two boys bowed to each other to signify the end of the match, the purple haired boy remained silent.

It was only as he was leaving the stage to praise of his various classmates that a smile crept onto his best up face.

Shinso stopped walking.

"I might have failed today, Midoriya, but don't forget that I might still be drafted into the hero course, and once I do, I'll become a hero that surpasses every single one of you." He proclaimed.

Izuku replies with a smile.

"You know, there's a club that can really help you get ready for when that time comes, I hear that it's run by a really cool guy." The boy quipped, "and please call me Izuku, I beat you up so much that I'd feel bad if you didn't."

"Call me Hitoshi then, that way you'll know the name of the man who surpassed you."

With those words, Hitoshi walked off into the abyss of the entrance tunnels.

Izuku ruefully shook his head to himself before doing the same.

Truly making friends by punching people had stellar effects, maybe the greenette should have been using that strategy since little.

He wondered if Katsuki would be much more agreeable with a bruised cheek.

Well there was plenty of opportunity to find out.


End file.
